


how to

by Sectionladvivi



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Heartache, Hospitalization, M/M, Major Character Injury, Near Death Experiences, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Slow Burn, Ultimate gay chicken, Wingman Romanoff, i write this on my phone at work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-07-28 19:24:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 32,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7653739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sectionladvivi/pseuds/Sectionladvivi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Wilson was the Picasso of flirting, which was why it was such a shame that Steve could probably get slapped in the face with a dick and still misinterpret a sexual advance as an honest mistake. Oh God, I’m sorry, I accidentally hit your dick with my face. I apologize. I can pay for that. I’m so sorry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. better than melatonin

**Author's Note:**

> 7/9/18  
> This story was meant to be 14 chapters long, but I stopped at 13 and never finished, and as of now I'm gonna call it. I will not be updating this work again. Thanks for reading and I hope you guys enjoy it as it is!

Sam Wilson was the Picasso of flirting, which was why it was such a shame that Steve could probably get slapped in the face with a dick and still misinterpret a sexual advance as an honest mistake. Oh God, I’m sorry, I accidentally hit your dick with my face. I apologize. I can pay for that. I’m so sorry.

It might have been because some part of Steve still saw himself as tiny anemic and undesirable. It might have been that there were some social cues being lost over the generations. Or, it could have been that he just wasn’t interested, and maybe when Steve acted like Sam’s yawn-stretch-out-the-arm-over-the-shoulders-classic-move, oh-you-can’t-quite-get-that-let-me-help-you-from-behind, oh-you-like-this-beverage?-yeah-I’m-just-gonna-memorize-that-and-always-have-one-ready-for-you, over-the-top flirtation was just what Bros Did, was Steve's way of saying politely, no thank you.

And that was why Sam didn’t push it. And he might have actually given it up after the first week, called Straight Boy and moved on for his own sanity, if it weren’t for, you know, fucking Steve. The look he sometimes gave Sam after a long day, a kind of wistful wordless tired look that felt like an invitation to not be alone. The way he laughed and still managed to be enchanted by jokes that were timelessly pathetic, as long as it was Sam who said them. The way he looked at Sam. The way he remembered his favorite beverage. That one time on the fourth of July when he had rested his head on Sam’s shoulder for two hours, in the dark, at the park, watching the fireworks, and Sam sat there for two hours wondering what the fuck? Was he asleep? Was he just indulging in some basic physical contact? Was this how guys hung out in the forties? Was he making a move? Should Sam have moved his arm, draped casually over the bench and wrapped it around Steve's shoulder, and pulled him closer?

Because he had _wanted_ to.

That was the main thing that kept him after it, kept him watching Steve over his coffee. Steve asking ‘hey you want a bagel?’, Sam shaking his head, Sam watching Steve’s ass as he went off to make himself a bagel. He wasn’t subtle. He didn’t care. He didn’t have to be. There wasn’t a person in the room who either didn't care or wouldn't notice. Romanoff knew, and had refused Sam’s questioning of ‘Is he gay? Is he straight? Is he gay? He’s straight, right? Is he gay? Bi?’ with a look that said ' _I know and you never will_ '. Banner knew, and was deeply uncomfortable, and pretended he didn’t know, hiding behind a tablet and the burying his nose in the latest on stem cells. Stark- okay, Stark didn’t know, partly because he was too preoccupied with his toys to know, and partly because of all people, Sam didn’t need Tony Stark tinkering with his potential love life. Or potential sex life. Oh, jesus.

Steve sat back down with his bagel, and they went back to discussing whoever the hell needed rescuing, until Steve looked at him across the table with those blue eyes, and he had a bit of cream cheese smeared on his lower lip, and Sam had to leave the room.

-

He had held off on jacking it to Steve for months, because that was one of those ‘no going back’ situations. Once you had jerked it to someone you saw on nearly a daily basis, you were going to fuck, or you were going to be miserable.

Sam went with miserable.

For a long time he kept his jacking wholesome, just part of the whole pre-sleep routine. Better than melatonin. Finishing himself off with the speed and efficiency that came from having to learn to make yourself come in a dry heat of 115, some no man’s land south of Baghdad, wearing the same fatigues you had sweated in for the past three days. Not sexy. But sometimes you just had to get it done.

He pointedly just got it done until Steve decided to take up swimming laps as a joint-friendly alternative to jogging, and Sam met him on his way to change, Steve toweling off his hair, which was darker when it was wet, bare-chested, still dripping, the swim trunks still wet and clinging to his thighs, and to the rest of him, in a way that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

The image was seared into his head through his own morning workout, breakfast, protein oats, lunch, spinach salad and chicken, meetings, yep he would get on that, having a meaningful one-on-one with a woman who couldn’t stop her intrusive thoughts about shrapnel, and then going home, he didn’t even eat supper, he went straight to jacking it to Steve’s wet body and the shape of Steve’s dick through those trunks.

He imagined the slick snap sound of pulling the trunks down over Steve’s hips, dragging them down with a single thumb, wrapping his hand around Steve’s dick and spiraling his palm up and down until he was hard, he imagined the look on Steve’s face as he reflexively arched his back into his hand, the flush in his cheeks and on the top of his chest, the way he would suck in his breath as Sam ran his thumb hard over the head of his dick, Steve giving an involuntary ‘hhuh’ as Sam pressed his lips softly into the skin under his ear, and that was as far as Sam got before he came into his own fist with a grunt.

Yeah, that was a hell of a lot better than melatonin.

-

“Sam, how do you date?”

Sam looked up from chewing on his pen and thinking about Steve naked to look at Steve, clothed, (flannel button-up), sitting at the table across from him. Steve was on his phone, browsing something that had apparently piqued this particular curiosity.

“What do you mean? How do I date, specifically?”

“More in general.” Steve put his phone down and his serious face on. Earnest blue eyes. “I haven’t dated since ninety forty - not even then, actually. Didn’t exactly have women beating down my door to start with, and then it was the army, and then,” He made the wishy washy gesture that pushed aside the misery that was Peggy, who he was still too sensitive to talk about, even with Sam. “I’ve seen the movies. You know. Titanic. Romcoms?”

“Yeah, romcoms,” Sam acknowledged, wondering where the hell this was going, intrigued and already regretting being intrigued.

“Right,” said Steve. “I can do romantic gestures. Probably. I know about flowers, chocolate. But say I meet someone. On the street. I want to talk to them. How do you do that?” He spoke in an undertone as if embarrassed, but the look on his face was more mystified. "Then from that, where do you go? Movies, I guess. Dinner, I guess. Somewhere along the lines you get married, I guess. But it's the little things I'm lost on."

“Steve, these are age old questions,” said Sam with a no-problem wave. “'How do you pick up girls?' 'How many dates before sex?' 'Who brings the condoms?'”

Based on Steve’s expression, some of those were considerations that had not even come into mind.

“Why are you even asking?” _Are you asking me out? Should I bring the condoms?_

Steve almost didn’t show him, but then yielded his phone. It was open to one of those trash websites for women in their 20s, an article titled _Will You Die Alone?_ There was an accompanying picture of a white woman sitting in bed and gazing sorrowfully out the window.

Sam suppressed his laugh. “Okay,” he said. “Well first of all, you are not gonna die alone. You start dying all by yourself somewhere, you call me, okay?”

Steve gave him that dying-is-not-funny-Sam face.

“And secondly, lucky for you, my dating game is on lock. I’ve got romance coming out of my ears, man. This is my wheelhouse. I can help.

“But third, I gotta ask, because it does matter. You have someone special in mind?”

Steve looked hesitant again. Sam had dry mouth. This was the closest he had managed to come to ‘Who do you want to fuck?’ in the months he had been trying to hunt down Steve romantically. It was all he could do to keep his expression casual.

“I don’t know,” said Steve. “Maybe.”

Sam almost chucked the phone at his beautiful face.

“I can work with that,” he said. “We’ll just go through all the usual scenarios, you’ll be prepared for anything.

“Let’s start with a coffee date.”

-

“Why are we on our phones again?”

“All right. In this scenario, you've met someone, asked them for coffee. It's a casual thing. You aren't picking them up, so no fancy clothes, no flowers. You're meeting _at_ the coffee shop, so you have to call and coordinate, make sure you end up in the same place at the same time.”

“Okay, but I can see you across the street.”

“Great, job well done. Now give me a little wave.” Steve waved obediently from across the street, an awkward I’m-not-used-to-playing-pretend Steve wave.

Sam threw up his own hand high overhead to wave exuberantly, like a soccer mom.

“Okay, now get over here.”

Steve joined him on the corner, reached for the shop door, then stopped. Sam was looking at him expectantly with his hands in pockets.

“Should we- do we go in?” asked Steve.

“Well that's not very flirty,” said Sam. “Remember the scenario - you've just met up with this person. You like them. You're eager to see them, grateful they've agreed to go on a coffee date, the most lowkey and non-stressful of dates. And that's all you got? ‘Should we go in?’”

Steve stared at him with a total lack of comprehension.

“Romance me,” said Sam.

Steve put his hands at his sides, gave Sam a critical up and down, and did his best. “Your shoes are nice.”

“Yikes,” said Sam.

Steve just shrugged. “I thought that was a pretty universally accepted compliment for women?”

“Do I look like a woman to you, Steve?

“Rule number one of the coffee date- hell, any date. Compliment the person in front of you, as the person they are. Not all women want their shoes complimented, by the way, and half of them will think you're gay for saying that. These are new shoes, though, thanks.”

“Maybe you should lead by example,” suggested Steve, with an unspoken, _'If you're so good at this'_.

Sam did so with immediacy and enthusiasm.

“Steve, good to see you, glad you made it.” He clasped Steve's hand, put his other hand over top of it. “You look great. You been working out?” In an undertone he elaborated: “Acknowledging them for showing up to meet your sorry ass, hand clasp slash shake with other hand over top to lay the groundwork for physical intimacy, and a compliment which is casual and tailored to who they are as a person.”

Steve looked funnily at their clasped hands, maybe self conscious of the attention of onlookers, maybe not. Sam knew he was sure as hell hyperaware of the warmth of Steve’s hand, the urge to run a thumb over the soft and uncalloused inside of his palm. He dropped it.

“Now we can go inside,” he said. “You open the door. That's something that makes a universally good impression.”

They stood in the line in a silence which felt not awkward, but pointed.

“This doesn't feel much like a date,” said Steve. “This feels like any Tuesday. Except it's not Tuesday. It's Saturday. And we're getting coffee, not protein shakes.”

“That's a good sign,” said Sam. “If you're comfortable on the first date. Means there's chemistry.”

Steve gave him an exasperated look as they reached the counter. “Two americanos,” he said, then belatedly looked back at Sam. “Or, should I not order for you?”

“Depends on the date. Either way, make sure you're ordering the right thing. And never, ever try to order a girl a salad.”

“Noted,” said Steve, and, pulling out his wallet, “I assume it's my treat?”

“If you’re hoping for a second date, then hell yeah it's your treat.”

-

Picking the right seat was the least important part of the ‘date’, but Sam let Steve sweat over it, pretending as though there were some perfect ratio of eye contact to knee proximity to sun glare that he needed to know about.

“Or, you know, we could sit literally anywhere,” he said, when he had gotten his fill of Steve's consternation. They sat, and Steve balled up a napkin and threw it at him.

“Well, so far this sucks,” said Steve. “Remind me why I asked you on a date again?”

“Nope,” said Sam. “Cheating. _You_ have to tell _me_.” Playing the date, he leaned forwards, fingers crossed under his chin, practically batting his eyelashes. “Why did you decide to ask me out, Steve? After we've worked together for so long? Why not before?”

Steve cottoned on to the roleplay. “I thought you were seeing someone,” he said. A pretty good excuse, if he were making it up on the spot.

“Why'd you think that?”

“Because.” Steve made his I-don't-know-how-to-talk-about-this wavey hand gesture. “The uh, the handsomeness?”

Sam busted out laughing.

“Oh man,” he said. “That so would not fly. But kudos for ‘handsomeness’. That would get most people anyway. Go on, say more about my handsomeness and presumed unavailability.”

“That's true, you know,” said Steve.

“Yeah, yeah, I know I'm handsome,” said Sam, waving it off, then, “Wait, for real? Which part?”

“I actually thought you had a girlfriend,” said Steve. “For the longest time.”

“...because of my handsomeness?”

Now it was Steve’s turn to laugh. “It was your house. It was just really really clean. Like, scrub the tiles with a toothbrush clean.”

“You think I'm taken because my house isn't a rat warren? Steve, again, this is the twenty first century. Men are allowed to touch cleaning products now.”

“I know _that_ ,” said Steve. “I clean. But I've still got a mess half the time, books falling over, need to replace a lightbulb. I just thought having such a clean, organized place meant you had regular… guests.”

“‘Guests’,” repeated Sam, covering his smile with his hand. “Well, I can't say there haven't been ‘guests’, but I haven't been seeing anyone. Not for a while.”

“Oh,” said Steve. His voice was so offhand, so casual, the way he sipped his coffee and looked away carefree, that Sam narrowed his eyes in sudden suspicion. Had Steve orchestrated the entire conversation to find out if he was single?

“All right, Steve, ball’s in your court,” he said, getting a little revenge. “Your own dating history. Any girl is gonna want that. Give it up.”

Steve winced. “Walked myself right into that one, didn't I?”

“Disclosure is a two way street, my friend,” said Sam, then added, “Slash paramour.”

“I haven't really dated,” said Steve, and fished for a normal excuse. “I'm just- not very good at it.”

“Here's the part where she takes a two second look at your bod and assumes you're gay and repressed,” said Sam.

“Do I look gay?” asked Steve.

“That's not really- people don't ‘look’ gay, Steve. Not unless they are wearing a shirt that says ‘I am gay’.”

“You keep mentioning it,” said Steve. “What is it? Why would people think I'm gay? Do _you_ think I'm gay?”

Oh, Sam dodged the hell out of that question.

“I only mean that someone is going to look at you, all blond and blue eyed and built, and they're going to wonder why the hell you’re single.”

“Is the truth not good enough?” asked Steve. “Frozen for seventy years, spent the last few too busy saving the world to get out there and mingle?”

“To be honest, Steve-” And he was really toeing the fucking line here. “I know you better than most people and I'm not sure I even get it half the time.”

“Why I don't date?”

_Yes, God, why the hell not?_

“I mean, Steve, you could have whoever the hell you wanted. You know how many women probably turn off the lights and pretend their husband is you, every night?”

Steve went bright pink. That thought had obviously never come close to occurring to him. God, was he going to think it was weird that it had occurred to Sam?

“Sorry,” said Sam, embarrassed for the both of them, drinking his coffee.

“That is it, honestly,” said Steve. He spoke into the side of his hand, like he was confessing something long held. Looking humiliated but also resigned, almost depressed. “People look at me and they expect something else. I'm not some- stud. I'm not any of that. I can't be what they want. I don't even know how to get coffee.” He mashed his forehead into his palm, looking down at his americano in an exhausted depression that Sam realized was very, very old.

He felt a sudden anger- a pointless anger at a vague They that had made Steve feel this way, and at himself for not even realizing it, for tormenting Steve with this whole stupid game of a date instead of trying to help.

Sam reached out and grabbed his hand, barely knowing he was doing it. “Hey,” he said. “There's nothing wrong with that, okay? There's nothing wrong with you.” He interlocked their fingers, running his thumb over Steve’s knuckles, realizing he was doing it as he was doing it, too late to take it back, and Steve didn't pull his hand away. “You've seen all the movies. They're mostly bullshit, yeah, but it's true that when you find the right person, they love you for you. The right person doesn't give a fuck.”

Steve stretched out his fingers against Sam’s and then relaxed them again, letting Sam stroke his knuckles there in the middle of the crowded coffee shop. And because Steve was letting him, and because he couldn't resist, Sam turned his hand over and ran his thumb down the soft, uncalloused skin of his palm.


	2. the three day rule

_Jesus Christ, did I really hold his hand?_

Sam had been brushing his teeth vigorously for about twenty minutes now.

_Why the fuck did I do that?_

Even the overpowering spearmint couldn't flush out the clusterfuck of physical and emotional reactions, and overanalysis. Hyperoveranalysis.

Exhibit A - Steve let Sam hold his hand.

And not just for a second, for probably several minutes. Letting Sam’s fingertips play over his skin in slow comfort, letting his hand be lax, be manipulated, not just letting but actually watching Sam lock their fingers together, rubbing thumbs, with a look of tired peace in his eyes, his chest rising and falling more slowly and that tension easing out of his shoulders, until the waitress had come over to check whether they needed anything else, and Steve had finally pulled his hand away as if in realization that other people existed.

Fuck that waitress. She had been great, he left a buck in the jar, but fuck her.

Exhibit B - Steve had mentioned women explicitly at least three times. He had suggested Sam had a girlfriend. He had asked ‘do I seem gay?’

But he had never, not once, said explicitly, ‘I'm straight’. He had never, not once, said explicitly, ‘I'm gay’. He had never, not once, said ‘I don't really care either way, it's all about the person, you know?’

How the hell had they gotten through that entire conversation without establishing if he liked men, or women, or both? Or neither? That was a haunting fourth possibility.

Exhibit C - what was exhibit C again? He couldn't stop thinking of exhibit A.

Seeing Steve soaking wet fresh from the pool had given his mental spank bank a new lease on life, but holding Steve’s hand had opened up a new hole of aching, the kind that hurt bad.

He was fucked.

They had a team wide briefing in thirty minutes.

He was not remotely prepared to see Steve.

-

Steve greeted him in the exact same way he did every morning when Sam arrived a little late to the briefings, looking up from the conversation with a little smile and nod, absolutely no acknowledgement that there was any reason for things to be weird, before diving back in to the discussion.

Good. That was good. Things were normal.

He took the last seat available, which was by Natasha. That was less good.

“You're sweaty,” she said. “Get caught in the middle of your jog when you realized you were late ?” Giving him an excuse and mocking it in the same breath. She didn't even look at him.

“Save it, Romanoff,” he said.

The latest disaster was deemed low priority and therefore Clintworthy, which relegated the rest of them to training exercises. Which usually meant push-up contests with Steve. Disaster.

Fortunately, he had a ding on the left wing, and he played it off as an excuse to have Tony look at it. He couldn't possibly practice maneuvers with a dinged wing. What if it malfunctioned and killed somebody?

Steve looked a little disappointed, and Romanoff gave him a keen I'm-fucking-with-your-shit-later look (or didn't, that was fairly close to her default expression), but Stark was happy to get his hands on something that wasn't his current project. Sam had no idea what the hunk of metal and wire was supposed to be but he and everybody in the building had heard Tony swearing at it for the past three days.

“Well this is all superficial,” said Tony when he got a good look at the wing, sounding deeply disappointed that Sam hadn't been operating with a fatal deficiency in his tech. “What, you want a new paint job? You ready to ditch the red?”

“Just knock out the dents, Stark,” said Sam. There was no place comfortable to sit in Tony’s mess of a workroom, and he was afraid to even lean on half of the stuff in it, so he had to just stand by with crossed arms. “Should be pretty easy for you.”

“Should be pretty boring is what it is,” muttered Tony, but he must have been really damn frustrated with his latest tinker-toy, because he dragged out a welder and plugged it in. “Oh, yeah.” He tossed Sam a helmet with a darkened visor, pulling one of his own down over his face. “Wear that, if you don't want to go blind.”

Sam pulled down the visor and the whole world went a near-black green, like being at the bottom of an lake. There was a clicking sound, and the welder flamed to life, at first in a great orange flash. Tony shrunk and refined it down to a thin blue pinprick.

Sam didn't know exactly what Tony was doing, but it held his interest and he watched for a good twenty minutes, until the flame clicked off, and Tony pulled back his visor. Sam pulled his off.

“Good as new,” said Tony. “Not that, you know, there was anything wrong with it in the first place.”

“Thanks,” said Sam. He had managed to go twenty minutes without thinking about the hand holding dilemma, but now it occurred to him again, and he looked down at his wing wondering how the hell he was going to avoid the situation now.

“So do I get to know what you're avoiding by lurking around up here, now that I've fixed your toy?” asked Tony. When Sam looked at him, he shrugged. “I'm no Black Widow, but I think this is actually the first time you've come up here. You don't have to confide in me. Hell knows I wouldn't confide in you. I do have scotch, though, if you're into that.”

“You haven't been drinking and welding, have you?”

“You sound like Pepper,” said Tony, who ducked around a corner, and pulled out a half empty bottle.

It wasn't even a good brand.

“You have glasses?” Sam asked.

“Somewhere,” said Tony, and took a shot direct from the bottle, then held it out in offering.

Fuck it.

-

“Tony, you're straight, right?”

“College doesn't count.” Tony took the bottle passed back. “Yeah. Like- ninety seven percent yeah. If this is leading up to seducing me, by the way, you didn't even bring the booze, and that's just poor form.”

“All right, so you've never had to do the ‘is he gay? Is he straight?’ dance before.”

“Well sometimes the ‘is she a lesbian’ dance, but mostly they're pretty upfront about not wanting to talk to me,” said Tony. He had downed most of the bottle so far. “If you're gay, and the problem is someone harassing you, just know that on paper we have a pretty hardcore equal opportunity policy. And by that I mean somebody will happily bury them. Cap or Banner, I don't know which one is currently ragingest against the machine. I'll have to check their bumper stickers.”

“I'm not- no, that's not the problem.” Annoyed. He couldn't tell if Tony was drunk or not paying attention, because he wasn't dense. “Forget the gay thing. But the whole ‘do they like me’ thing. Have you _ever_ had to deal with that, with the whole, billionaire playboy bit?”

“It's not a ‘bit’, it's a lifestyle.” Tony gave him finger guns, grabbed some piece of half-built equipment, and flopped down on the floor to use it as a pillow, tucking his hands behind his head. Definitely tipsy. “And yeah, hello? Human being here? That ‘do they like me’ shit is universal. It's like - getting splinters. Getting that fucking eyelash stuck in your eye. That's just universal, human, shit.”

“Sorry to make assumptions, then.”

“This is a weird conversation,” said Tony to his ceiling, then continued monologuing. “Me and Pepper, we did the dance for must have been years. Jesus." He rubbed his eyes. "Mostly because I've been a twat, I mean, I'm me, who could blame her, but what kind of confusing hell on earth that was. But great.” He laughed. “A great time. Sometimes.”

“For years?” Sam repeated.

“If you're doing the dance with somebody, Wilson, I got one piece of advice for you.”

“Just bite the bullet and ask them out?”

“Hell no.” Tony sat up, pointed at him with the same hand holding the bottle. “Stretch it out. Because if you don't get it perfect, it all goes poof. Like Jenga. Well. Jenga doesn't really go poof, does it. Goes clatter?”

“Great.” Sam took the bottle away from him and killed it.

“You wanna know how to tell if someone is gay?” said Tony, not caring.

“You have a scanner for that now?”

“Don't need one.” Tony pointed at him with an unsteady finger, serving up a final piece of wisdom. “Get them in the same room as Steve. If they can spend five minutes with that perfect human specimen and hold eye contact for more than ten seconds, they are straight as hell.”

-

Steve caught up to him as he was headed to his car, was actually waiting for him in the parking lot, fiddling around on his phone in the way that always looked ridiculous. Big man, little phone. He stowed it away when he saw Sam.

“How bad was that thing busted up?” he asked. “Didn't see you all day.” Then he took another look at Sam, that close observation that felt pricklingly like a physical scan. “Have you been drinking?”

“Stark was feeling beat up about some stuff,” Sam lied, then regretted it immediately. Steve was going to contact Tony about his troubles asap, which meant that Sam would have to get to him first to make him lie, which meant he was going to have to lie to Tony about why he had to lie, which meant an evening of phone tag and a giant headache. “So we shot the shit.” _This is great. This is all great. This whole thing I'm doing. Good job._

“What's going on?” Steve was predictably concerned. “And you aren't planning on driving, are you?” And just as predictably concerned with responsibility and public safety.

Sam waved his phone. “Was gonna watch a movie in my car til I sobered up. Didn't have more than three shots.”

“You don't have to do that, I can give you a ride.” Steve held up a set of keys dangling from one finger. “Natasha needed the bike for something, so we swapped wheels.”

Romanoff had somehow anticipated and orchestrated this, Sam knew it. And he knew it was a terrible idea to be slightly tipsy in the same car as Steve, driving back to his place.

But he was gonna do it anyway.

-

There was a large silence as they got in the car, as Steve took them out of the parking lot, Sam fiddling with the radio to avoid coming up with a starting point for conversation. Politics, politics, where was the political radio. _'What's love, but a second hand emotion-'_ Nope. _'-near and far, closer together-'_ Nope. _'We ain't even gonna make it to this club-'_ Oh _hell_ no.

He left it on some classical station and hoped Steve didn't call him out for breaking character.

“Okay,” said Steve. “On a scale from one to ten, one being the worst, ten being best, how was it? And be honest.”

“How was what?” Drinking with Tony?

“The coffee date,” said Steve.

The coffee date? Were they going to discuss it, just like that?

“I know it wasn't great, but I figure I get some points by default for opening the door and paying for the coffees.”

Oh. They were going to discuss it, just like that.

“All right,” said Sam, and the flirt in him came out rubbing its hands together like a gremlin. “If we're gonna make this a numbers game. Let's see... A point each for paying and door opening, like you said. A point for complimenting my handsomeness, a point for being handsome yourself. A point for emotional transparency on the first date - not something everyone would appreciate, but in this context I think it was appropriate.

“And a final point for having nice hands.” He put it all out on the table.

He held his breath.

Steve, unpiqued by the reminder that they had held hands for over a minute in a public place, counted in his head.

“That's only six points.” He glanced over at Sam. “That bad?”

“Six isn't bad,” said Sam, feeling simultaneous relief that they were talking, that he hadn't wrecked their entire dynamic by getting handsy, and near-aggravation that Steve had brushed it aside, just like that, as if Sam hadn't made a serious romantic overture. Some of his irritation came out in his assessment. “Six is room for improvement. You didn't ask me anything about my work or my hobbies. You didn't share yours. These are fundamentals, man. And, worst of all, you didn't ask me on a second date.”

“Oh,” said Steve in honest surprise. “Do you ask just like that, on the first date?” They were pulling up in front of Sam’s place now.

“Maybe not outright, but at least imply it. Say ‘I had fun, do you want to do this again sometime?’ or tell them ‘I'll call you’ and then -and this is important- actually call them.”

Steve put the car in park. “Isn't there some kind of rule-"

“The three day rule, yeah. Tried and true. But, just my opinion, if you like someone, don't waste your time. You don't want them to think you aren't interested.”

“Okay,” said Steve thoughtfully.

He turned and leaned over, when Sam was halfway out the door. “Hey, Sam.”

Sam leaned back in, was confronted with the full spectrum of those baby blues. "Yeah?"

“I had fun, you wanna do that again sometime?”


	3. risky text

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> taking the 'marvel is fiction in dc universe and dc is fiction in the marvel universe' thing and rolling with it

_“I had fun, you wanna do that again sometime?”_

Sam lay in bed with his fingers crossed behind his head and replayed the scene in his head.

It had taken him a second to get his bearings, to pull something coherent and convincingly cool out of a mental reaction that was basically a blush.

“Love to,” he’d said, coolly, and with a smirk acknowledging yes this was one big joke, haha, they were kidding around. “What did you have in mind?”

“You're the one giving the instructions,” Steve had pointed out. “What comes after the coffee date?”

_Come up to my place and I'll show you what comes after the coffee date._

_No. Shut the fuck up!_

“Well, depending on your intentions and comfort zone, you've got a number of possibilities.” Ticking a few off on his fingers. “The formal dinner date. The casual dinner date. The cooking them dinner at your place date. That's a big winner, especially if you can whip up something more advanced than your basic chicken alfredo. The picnic in the park date, if you're a sodden romantic and also broke. The movie date, if you're anxiety ridden and want an excuse to sit in the dark with someone without having to talk about what it all means.”

“I hear the new Batman is getting good reviews,” Steve had said. “I'll get the tickets if you buy the popcorn.”

_You son of a bitch._

Steve was fucking with him.

Either he had already wanted to see Batman and was taking their ‘how to’ game as an excuse to go see it without shame, or he had twisted Sam's words around on him with a speed and skillfully feigned innocence that was thoroughly un-Steve-like.

Or was it?

_He's fucking with me._

Steve wasn't an idiot. Sam knew that. He was constantly having to drag the dude out of an ebook or wikipedia article, had worked with him on enough missions and followed enough of both his plans and pulled-out-of-the-ass improvisation to know that Steve had a mind as quick as his 4 minute mile. And despite Steve's personal hesitations, his romantic road blocks, Sam knew that of all things Steve was not emotionally obtuse.

Especially where Sam was concerned. Sam only had to sigh, no, didn't even have to sigh, and Steve would recognize that something was eating at him. Most of the time he knew exactly what that thing was. Probably because they had most of the same things eating at them. Guilt. Responsibility. The same always-suppressed but never-quite-absent twitch at any sound that resembled weapons fire.

He knew that Steve knew him like the back of his hand. Their wordless understanding was what made them such an effective team, and such good friends.

Which led him to an impossible conclusion.

Not that Steve was fucking with him. Because Steve was, as a rule, never cruel. If he knew that Sam had unrequited feelings, he would never bait them. He would keep a respectful distance. Never give false hope and crush it.

Which meant that _Sam_ wasn't the one playing games in order to get his fix of romantic one-on-one with his friend.

Steve was.

_You son of a bitch._

-

Natasha made her way to the playing field.

It was security, that night, some award ceremony where he and Romanoff had been asked (in the way that was more order than suggestion) to be in attendance because some self-important senator had gotten a chilly willy over some threats from an equally self-important online group of hackers and shit-talkers. The two of them had gotten the detail because Romanoff in formalwear never didn’t blend in, and because there were some higher ups in attendance who appreciated the presence of someone a little more military, and a little less sneaky and Russian.

“Show of hands,” Sam had said, upon first hearing the request. “Anyone think that Guy Fawkes is actually going to make an appearance?”

“Low risk doesn’t mean no risk,” said Rhodes. He was the one pushing for it. He had friends in high places in attendance, the kind of friends that would love a reassurance that the Avengers were at their beck and call. “Even if nothing happens, it's a show of support.” Anything to give their little group the illusion of affiliation with some kind of official authority.

“By ‘show of support’, do you mean ‘pandering’?”

Rhodes looked at him shrewdly. “Nothing wrong with showcasing a little cooperation.” He obviously had practice having this conversation, almost definitely with Stark, and was gunning to win it for once. “What's the worst case scenario? Ceremony goes off without a hitch, you two get to drink champagne and watch the sun set off one of the nicest balconies in the country. I don't see how that's an inconvenience.” Yeah, that argument probably would have worked on Tony.

Sam couldn't say the _real_ reason he didn't want to be in attendance, which was that it was Date Night.

If he had been able to actually say, ‘Can't. Have a date.’ they might have let it slide, let Natasha go alone, maybe even let Iron Patriot have a blip in the spotlight.

‘I was gonna go to the movies with Steve,’ didn't have quite the same ring to it.

Steve wasn’t in attendance, which somehow made this worse. Knowing that Sam was going to have to get ahold of him to cancel. Have to tell him ‘Sorry man, I have to go protect some people who were probably never in danger in the first place,’ in a way that somehow managed to be both surface-level casual, and beneath-the-surface deeply apologetic, and then Sam was going to have to find a way to scramble for a new real-or-fake-what-the-fuck-ever-it-was date.

Even worse, he was going to have to do it by text.

Steve was tying up work of his own, the kind of tying up that involved private debriefings and Fury and No Damn Phones Allowed Because If I Hear A Phone Go Off One More Time It’s Headed To Stark As Scrap Metal.

“We need you two en route in forty minutes,” said Rhodes. “You wanna argue for the next thirty-five, or you want a chance to pick out your own suit?”

-

“Nice suit,” said Natasha. “They get it tailored that fast, or do you just look good everything?”

He didn’t say ‘Save it, Romanoff,’ but he did press his lips into a thin line, and he didn’t take the drink she was offering him.

She was wearing - big surprise - black, and the same innocent-of-all-misdeeds expression Sam suspected Steve had been taking notes from. She had her hair up. Earrings were either the ones that could act as mics or small, targeted explosives if need be, he couldn’t remember which. She was holding a vodka martini and a cosmopolitan. She was offering him the latter.

“Didn’t take you for a teetotaler, Wilson,” she said, when he didn't take it. “Or has Steve been… rubbing off on you?”

He stared her right in her damn face, and she stared him right back, at first with an intense blankness, and then with a smile, a vicious right hook of the side of her mouth saying that she knew _everything_.

He took the stupid cosmopolitan.

“Okay, fine,” he said. “What do you know? What do you want to know? What do you even care?”

“Why I care should be obvious,” she said. “As a friend, and as someone who enjoys the occasional soap opera. And you two have got quite the soap opera going on.”

“We don’t have anything going on,” said Sam, both in defense and resentment. If Rhodes hadn’t intervened ( _yeah_ , he was gonna make this personal), he and Steve would be sitting through the previews right now. In the dark. Maybe in those new reclining seats in the very back, the ones without separators.

He was sure Steve would have sprung for the good seats, the ones right in the center, but, what if he hadn’t?

Now he was never going to find out.

She was eyeing him with characteristic intrusiveness. “I noticed that the wistfully swapped heart eyes had taken a nosedive lately. I assumed it was because you two were trying to be sneaky, because you’d stopped beating it around the bush and started beating-”

“Please,” said Sam. “ _Please_ do not finish that sentence.”

“So, not that,” she said, with that right hook of a smile. “Yet the goo goo eyes are a thing of the past. And you are both too cheerful for there to have been an awkward ‘Thanks, but no thanks’. What’s the middle ground, Wilson?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Please.” She didn’t even bother to roll her eyes. “You know Steve. I know Steve. You’re not telling me you don’t want someone knowledgeable to confide in?”

“I don’t need anyone to ‘confide’ in.”

“Fine,” she said. “Call it a second opinion.”

He had to cringe at his own internal admission that yes, yes he did want someone knowledgeable to confide it, and secondly, the knowledge that what he and Steve were doing was at best ridiculous, at worst high school ‘do you like me or not? check a box’ level romancing.

“Okay,” he said. “We’re dating.”

“That doesn’t sound like you ‘don’t have anything going on’,” said Natasha.

“But, we’re also not dating.”

She sipped her martini. “Lost me there.”

“It’s-” he searched for words that dignified the stupidity of what was actually happening. “Dating _advice_.”

No, no, that still sounded really stupid.

“He asked me for some tips about modern dating. I thought I would just, uh, demonstrate. Show him how it goes.”

“And how did it go?” No reaction from her so far, probably reserving judgment (and mirth) for once she had squeezed the whole story out of him.

“We got coffee. We talked about shit. It was a date, okay? But it wasn’t a date. It was a fake date.” No way in hell he was going to tell her about the hand holding episode.

“Uh huh. And have you two had any more ‘fake dates’?”

“We had one tonight,” he said, much more grouchily than he should have. “Until I had to come rescue Senator Dorsey from some imaginary hacktivists.”

“And where were you two crazy kids headed? Nice Italian restaurant? Romantic walk down by the pier?”

He scowled. “The movies.”

“Those first dates are always the most fun,” said Natasha, with an air of nostalgia. “Learning their favorite movies, chatting about career trajectories, wondering if you’re two friends just kidding around or a few careful moves from domestic bliss with Captain America. You know what this really is?”

_Nope._ And he wasn’t sure he wanted her conclusion.

“It's ultimate gay chicken.”

“It’s not ultimate gay chicken,” he defended automatically.

_Oh my god, it’s ultimate gay chicken._

She leveled with him over the bottom of her martini. “One of you is going to have to tough it out and be straight-” Taking his eye roll with a smile. “-thank you- with the other, or things are going to peter out into awkwardness the likes of which neither of you is prepared for.”

“It’s a lot easier to be ‘straight’ with someone if you know what team, or teams, they’re batting for,” he said. “What’s your second opinion there? You’ve known him longer. He drop any hints? Say anything outright?”

“Nope,” she said flippantly. “No idea. But I’m just as interested as you are in finding out.” She handed him her empty glass. “Let me know how it goes, Wilson. Now if you don’t mind, I have a senator to go pretend to protect.”

She disappeared back into the crowd as only Natasha Romanoff could do, and Sam threw back his cosmopolitan like a shot.

-

After he had gone halfway through the event with no reply from Steve, Sam had silenced his phone as a shield against the dread of apprehension. Every shift of his jacket had felt like a text vibrating in his pocket. After pulling it out to a blank screen for the tenth time, he had given up and shut it off.

He should have been relieved to get home and shrug off the suit, throw himself down on the bed in his boxers, finally free of the tedium that had gone unpunctuated by the violence of anonymous hackers. Watch some TV. Eat some triscuits.

But being home, and being free of the tedium, meant checking his phone.

He showered instead.

He read the labels on every bottle in there, washed, rinsed, and repeated, until eventually his fingers began to prune and he had to step out.

His own text, edited maybe twenty times before sending, had read simply, _‘Rhodes sent me out on babysitting detail. Raincheck on that movie?’_. Casual. But apologetic.

When Steve hadn’t immediately replied, he had chalked it up to the length of the debriefing. When he had reached the ceremony and still no text, he had been sweating. By the time he turned off his phone, he had convinced himself of a number of rotating possibilities.

Possibility one - Steve was dead.

Okay, probably not, since he would have heard something by now. A dead Avenger was the kind of thing that would warrant a call back to the tower.

Possibility two - Steve hated him. Steve had read his text, thought, _’He thought I was serious? That’s awkward. Glad I dodged that bullet.’_ and gone back to kissing whatever supermodel he had met on his way back from Berlin.

Ridiculous enough to dismiss out of hand? Maybe.

Possibility three - and this was the worst one - Steve hadn’t checked his phone, had gone to the movies, become puzzled when Sam didn’t show up on time and then didn’t show up at all, and only then had he opened the text and realized Sam had bailed on him.

It had been a dry night, but Sam pictured him standing in the rain. Probably on a street corner under a single lonely lamplight. Reading the text and going, “...Oh.”. Maybe thinking to himself, _’It wasn’t like this was anything serious…’_ Maybe thinking to himself, _’It was a bad idea after all.’_ Maybe thinking to himself, _’This was probably for the best.’_ And then going back to his empty apartment, alone.

_What the fuck is wrong with you?_

_You are a grown ass man._

_Check your damn messages._

Sam retrieved his phone from his bedside table, sucked it up, and unlocked the screen.

He had only one text.

_No prob. I was lying about the good reviews anyway. Romcom next time?_

Sam flopped back in his bed, feeling ridiculous for his paranoia, and yet, somehow, better than ever.


	4. a damper on things

Sam came out of that movie resolved to make Steve Rogers’ life a living hell.

The pre-movie formalities had gone off without a hitch. For bailing, Steve had saddled him with both ticket and snack prices, which, fine, he had earned it. Steve guilt tripped him into emptying his pockets, and practically emptied out the concession stand. No way he was going to eat all that candy.

So, it wasn't a romcom. The rom was there. But Steve had left out the parts about cancer, miscarriage, the shipwreck, the lost love, and of course, the dead dog.

Having anticipated two hours of casual knee bumping, and accidentally touching hands when they both reached into the popcorn bucket, Sam was completely unprepared to have to try and Man Up and not fucking cry, dammit, while Steve sat next to him and chowed down on junior mints.

When the dog bit it he was Done.

Sam mumbled something about the bathroom and made an escape.

He pulled out his phone to play tetris until his balls redescended, and who had texted him, but Romanoff?

_Are you two enjoying A Broken Record?_

Steve had told her about the movie.

What the hell else had they talked about?

With Romanoff in Steve's corner, he could only conclude that she had had a hand in the last hour and twenty some minutes of his being put through the emotional wringer.

He filed her under Can't Be Fucking Trusted for the forseeable future.

 _When did you find the time to teach Rogers enhanced interrogation techniques?_ He shot back.

He imagined the two of them chatting it up like two gossipy schoolgirls, conspiring to come up with the most hilarious ways to scramble his romantic overtures. He was going to have to go back in there. He would break his lungs choking back tears before he would give either of them the satisfaction of knowing they had run him out of the theater.

Sam submitted himself to the last forty minutes of torment.

The dog had a funeral. Fantastic.

-

“Not his best work,” said Steve. “But his editor passed away in the middle of the film, I can understand why it would be sloppy.”

“Yeah, the narrative with the oncologist really derailed towards the end,” said Sam, as if he had watched to the end, instead of staring fixedly at a top corner of the screen and thinking really hard about his taxes.

They had stopped to grab a bite from an only slightly sketchy food truck, still working the busier streets serving their drunkest. Steve had paid this time, possibly out of some sense of remorse at the bait-and-switch that he otherwise came nowhere close to expressing.

But that was okay.

Sam knew exactly how to get him back.

They were finishing up their food, and the evening, in an empty parking lot. Sam sat on the curb, and Steve leaned on the fence, looking disgustingly content.

“So last time,” he said. “You gave me six points out of ten. Was I any better this time?”

The look Steve gave him was somewhere in the territories of self-satisfied, entertained, and/or deeply flirtatious. It made Sam want to shove him up against that fence, for more than one reason.

Sam balled up his empty wrapper and, oh so casually, let the bomb drop.

“You know what?” he said. “I think you've graduated.”

Steve froze with a mouthful of chorizo, then swallowed. “What?”

“Ten out of ten.” Sam got to his feet, dusting off his hands and pants. “Five stars. I don't think you need my help anymore.” He turned and clapped Steve, Steve who was staring at him, on the shoulder in the most platonic way possible. “You're ready to knock 'em dead, tiger.”

He started to head off down the sidewalk. "Finish that off, I'm not letting that mess in my car.”

Steve didn't say a word to him the whole drive back to his apartment. Whatever was in his face was undecipherable as he looked away, out the window.

What had emerged as a sense of satisfaction and swift vengeance began to warp very quickly in Sam's stomach.

 _He's upset,_ said one voice in his head.

 _Good,_ said two others in unison - the vengeful one that had suffered through a toddler sobbing over a cocker spaniel, and the romantic one, that was delighted at the idea that Steve was bummed over losing a chance to go out with him. That was the proof, wasn't it? That this wasn't just a helpful friend thing? What a break in the case!

 _You fucking idiot!_ said one more. _**You** just lost the chance to go out with **him** , you stupid asshole!_

“Thanks for the ride,” said Steve. They had reached his place already. He was about to get out.

Shit shit shit.

What did you do? How did you come back from that? _Quick, say something flirty. Kiss him, do it now._

He sat in paralysis until the car door had shut, and then, with no plan, called “Hey, Steve,” out the open window.

Steve leaned over. “Yeah?”

Nothing. He had nothing.

“Nothing.”

-

Sam sat at the table clicking and unclicking his pen over and over again. He was going over the schematic Banner had been passing around. Banner only really needed input from Stark, maybe Rhodes, but he liked to make a gesture of inclusion, a kind of ‘everybody's input is valid’ thing. Normally that was nice, but today it was just pissing him off. Today pretty much everything was pissing him off.

Sam wasn't even reading it. He was just staring at it and clicking his pen over and over again.

Banner sat a few feet away, trying to get some other work done while he waited for the Falcon’s symbolic approval, and every few minutes he would open his mouth, and shut it. Try to ignore the clicking pen. Look down at his work, look up again, open his mouth. Shut it again.

Eventually he ventured, “Something bugging you, Sam?”

Sam stopped clicking his pen and looked up, felt a flare of irritation at the intrusion, realizing a second later the irony of who he was mad at.

“If there's something I can clarify,” ventured Banner, gesturing vaguely at the plan with his own pen, not finishing his sentence.

“It's fine,” said Sam, and pushed the paper away. “It's good. Go ahead and do whatever this thing is.”

Banner had his tongue in his cheek, an I-don't-want-to-intrude look on his face.

“If you wanna talk about it-” he began.

Sam rubbed his face. Exasperated, then more amused than exasperated. “Stark said something similar. But he had booze. You don't strike me as the hard drinking type - what's your thing?”

Banner shrugged. “Frozen yogurt?”

-

He got froyo with Bruce Banner.

Bruce had vanilla and peach, topped with a load of fruit. Sam had chocolate. Topped with more chocolate. Topped with an aggressive amount of syrup and crushed oreos.

Some children ran past, shrieking, a beleaguered young mother or babysitter at their heels. The shrieking didn't seem to bother Banner one bit. Nothing ever seemed to. Dude had plenty of practice not being bothered, Sam supposed.

“So,” he said. “The Hulk likes froyo.”

Banner glanced up from his fruit heap. “Bruce Banner likes froyo,” he corrected, gently. Not bothered. Sam put his hands up in apology. “Everybody likes a low fat dessert,” said Banner. “Or,” he gestured at Sam's mess of calories. “Whatever this is.”

“It's called ‘eating your feelings’,” said Sam. “And it's delicious.”

“If I ate all of my feelings, I'd be as big as a house,” mused Banner.

They both realized what he had said in unison, and snorted.

“Anyway,” said Banner. “I know I'm no Tony Stark, but I'm pretty used to soaking up negative feelings, if you want to lob any at me.”

“Kind of you to offer.” Sam wondered why he had made it. Unless he just wanted an excuse to go get dessert.

“I just really need your insight on that schematic, and I can't trust your input if you're emotionally compromised,” said Banner, with an air of total seriousness.

“What the hell is that thing, anyway?”

“The Matrioshka damper?” asked Banner. “It's- actually, it doesn't matter. I just came up with it to try and distract Tony from that ansible monstrosity he's losing sleep over. He's not going to get a decent nights sleep until he's put something together successfully.”

“I let him fix my wing a week ago, he seemed pretty happy about that. Think maybe I should fly into a building, really give him something to clean up?”

Banner pointed his plastic spoon at him. “Now that would be kind of _you_.”

If Natasha was the least trustworthy of the group, Sam thought Banner might have been the opposite.

“So,” he said, digging his spoon into the oreo mush. “Steve.”

“Oh,” said Banner, and cleared his throat. “That.”

“I don't need to talk about it, if you're uncomfortable with that kind of thing.”

“I'm not uncomfortable,” said Banner, sounding a bit amused by the idea. “You've probably seen the bumper stickers. I just don't know if I can help.”

“I don't need help,” said Sam, and with more than a little disgust, “I know what I fucked up.”

“‘Fucked up’,” echoed Banner, in the way that invited explanation.

“I just made a dick move. And I was trying to, I don't know, take things slow. I don't know what the hell I was trying to do. But I screwed it up, whatever it was.” Remembering who he was talking to, he smiled ruefully. "I lost my temper."

“You think you scared him off,” Bruce observed, or guessed.

“Something like that.” His froyo was turning to soup. He stirred it without eating.

“That makes sense,” said Bruce. “Steve is pretty easily scared. The other day there was a spider in the kitchen. Poor guy. I had to come let it out before he could get anywhere near the peanut butter.”

“Ha ha,” said Sam, with the same level of sarcasm.

“I assume it hasn't occurred to either of you to just talk to one another?”

“At this point, I'm not sure that's even an option.”

“Mm, yes.” Banner examined a blueberry at the end of his spoon. “Suppressing things usually works out well, I hear. Psychology Today actually ran an article about it last week. Said that experts ran a study and found that 97% of unexpressed emotions eventually resulted in feelings of internal peace, increased quality of sleep, and overall improved wellbeing.”

“You know, I did not expect Bruce Banner to be this snarky.”

Bruce smiled and polished off the blueberry. “Like I said, I'm no Tony Stark, but, spend enough time with the guy- that snark is contagious.”

-

Banner was explaining the Matrioshka damper to Sam in words that he could mostly understand on their way up the stairs when they ran into Steve.

It was apparently completely unplanned by all parties, and the three of them stopped with identical expressions of ‘oh- I didn't expect to see you there’. The awkwardness of the successive silence was palpable, and horrifying. Steve was the one who broke it.

“Sam, do you have a second?”

Sam didn't even have the opportunity to open his mouth before Banner said, “You know what, I completely forgot to add some notes about the internal structures. I have to go, uh, do that. Talk later, Sam? Remember I'd like your sign off on the damper by the end of the day.”

And Banner took off, pausing only for a second behind Steve, to give Sam an unwelcome meaningful look, the kind your mom might make if you left your socks lying on the floor.

Sam crossed his arms, putting himself on the cool I-don't-care-whatever defensive. “Sure, man. What's up?”

“It's about the other night.” Steve glanced up and down the stairs, ensuring no one else was around, and looked at Sam with such earnestness that his mouth went dry.

“Okay,” he said stupidly.

“What you said, about how I didn't need your help.” Steve rubbed the back of his head, like any man struggling for words.

“Yeah?” His heart rate had skyrocketed humiliatingly.

“Remember the first time we talked about it, when you asked if I was into someone in particular?”

“Yeah?” _Please just spit it._

“I said I wasn't sure. I was just- embarrassed. But there was a specific person.”

_Go on._

“It's Natasha,” he said.

-

Banner was presenting the finalized design to the group. Stark had hijacked the presentation to nobody's surprise, seized a sharpie and started writing all over the board as he shot out suggestions. "Okay, but why don't we do this-" scribbling "-to deal with the fluid constriction?”

“Hmm,” said Banner. “You don't think that that would necessitate a change in materials?”

“Well, yeah, but it's not like we don't have spare tantalum lying around.”

The two of them became absorbed in the finer details, and those of them who had been paying attention gradually tuned out.

Sam sat on the couch next to Steve, glaring across the room.

Natasha, chatting with Clint, was fiddling with her necklace. He turned away for a moment, and she slowly, purposefully looked across the room. She looked Sam straight in the eye.

She winked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy the gratuitous and poorly researched technobabble


	5. tag

Romanoff didn’t give him a chance.

She was gone before the meeting was out- exactly when, Sam had no idea. One moment she was there. The next, poof. No redheaded Russian in sight.

As the rest of them were filing out, he took one fruitless glance left and right down the adjacent hallway (Steve was hanging back to talk to Stark about his imaginary bad feelings, which gave Sam just the hot second he needed), and tagged Barton.

“Hey uh, you know where I can find Romanoff?”

“Huh,” said Barton. “Never heard that one before.”

“Do you?” asked Sam. Not enough time or patience to be polite.

“I wondered where she had to go in such a hurry.” Barton, on the other hand, had plenty of time. He wasn’t making eye contact, and he wasn’t even doing it in a suspicious way. He was just on his phone checking his snapchat. He was pulling out his sunglasses, headed somewhere in no particular hurry. To drive Natasha’s getaway car, maybe.

“She tell you to stall me?”

“Now does that sound like something Natasha would do?” Barton gave him a look at the exact intersection of ‘sucks to be you dude’ and ‘not my problem’. “Nat and I have a rule, Sam. Whatever she’s got going on, at any given point in time- if it’s not life or death, I don’t have to deal with it. Is this life or death?”

Sam didn’t glare at him. That would be petty. He switched targets.

No, Rhodes didn’t know where she was, and/or she was on her way to a confidential mission.

He actually said that.

Rhodes was walking down the hall with an armful of paperwork, or intelligence, or whatever more domestic style heroism that he was entrusted with as one of the cooler heads in the building, when Sam caught up to him. He feigned some amount of nonchalance, even though they both knew that this conversation would not be happening if either party could help it.

“Hey Rhodes, you happen to know what beat Romanoff is working tonight? Couldn’t find her around.”

Rhodes looked just as reluctant to get pulled into whatever was brewing as Clint had been. He was slightly less upright about it. “No, I don’t know,” he said. “And/or, she’s on her way to a confidential mission."

It bugged the hell out of Sam that he genuinely couldn’t tell if Rhodes was serious or not. Who talked like that?

“Great,” he said. “You know when she might be back from whatever she is or isn’t doing?”

Rhodes shrugged. “No more mandatory meetings until the 3rd. I assume she’ll be there for roll call then, otherwise, your guess is as good as mine.”

Finally, Sam gave up, cursing down the middle of a long hallway, pulling out his phone just as she had surely wanted him to do, shooting off a _What are you trying to pull, Romanoff?_ text.

Her reply was instantaneous.

_Just play the game, Sam._

With a winky face.

-

Sam had to put it all down to bullet points again.

He slammed through his own cupboards, popped an excedrin, and flopped facedown onto his bed.

Okay, obviously they were both fucking with him now. Natasha and Steve were officially in league to defeat him. He knew now that ‘confiding’ in Romanoff was just another word for hand-delivering her deeply personal ammunition.

And to what end, well. He got the picture.

At what point in their ‘dating’, he wondered, had Steve taken the wheel?

From the getgo? From the moment he told Sam where to meet him and emerged wearing nothing but those agonizing swim trunks? From the moment he pulled the sad face and confessed his fear that he was going to die alone unless Sam Wilson taught his sorry ass how to get coffee and bat his eyelashes the appropriate number of times?

At what point had Natasha intervened? ‘No Steve - take him to a _sad_ movie. Level the playing field.’

‘Steve- no, Steve. Tell him you’re into _me_.’

‘No, Steve. The _black_ swim trunks.’

All of that was guesswork.

Here were the bullet points: Steve had let him hold his hand. Steve had pinned him down with those blue eyes one too many times for there to be anything platonic about this, even before the game had started. Steve had found him in the stairwell and confessed how much he needed his help, his romantic advice, to have his hand held through another set of dating tutorials, because how else could Steve hope to woo someone as wily as Romanoff?

Steve had called game on again.

No- he hadn’t called it. Steve had asked. Nicely. With a palpable subtext of ‘I’m sorry about the movie’ and ‘I’m not very good at this’. That chin down, eyes up, almost making himself smaller kind of look, that I’m Strong but I’m Sorry sincerity. And Sam wasn’t imagining that, because he knew him. He knew him better than anyone.

_Game on?_

Natasha was on the sidelines with a megaphone, shouting, ‘Play ball!’.

Here it was.

Ultimate gay chicken.

_Fuck it._

Banner had been right when he said that Steve was no coward. And you know what? Neither was Sam.

-

Steve picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”

“Steve, you were right.

“I don’t think you can handle Romanoff on your own.”

A moment of near-silence, where he could hear Steve breathing, right into his ear, and it prickled in his gut as if Steve were lying in the bed beside him.

“Yeah?” said Steve.

Sam rolled over onto his back, closed his eyes, and okay, he imagined it, he imagined Steve lying in the bed beside him, he was pathetic.

_’Just play the game, Sam.’_

“I think you’re going to need a lot more practice. She’s one classy lady.”

“That’s definitely how I would describe her,” said Steve, and even over the phone with his eyes closed, Sam could see his exact expression, that too-serious-to-be-serious face, the one that winked in his eyes, and if it went on too long, especially if Sam stared him down, he lost it and ended up having to hide his smile behind his hand.

“The classiest,” said Sam, unable to keep the venom from his tone.

He heard Steve laugh, a soft laugh, the kind you laugh alone in your room, when it’s late and you don’t want to bother the people living on the other side of the wall. Sam thought he heard- no, knew he heard relief. An easing back into normalcy. Well. Their new normalcy. The normal rhythm of their relationship. Comfortable. Like holding hands.

“Okay,” said Steve. “What do you suggest?”

“Well, we’ve done coffee. We’ve done the movie. We’ve done food trucks. But if you want to win over Romanoff, I think you have to take it up a notch.” He let his voice get a little softer, a little deeper. “Get serious. Really learn how to romance. You know what I mean?”

“Absolutely not,” said Steve, and Sam was pleased as hell, and more than a little tormented, to hear that his voice had gone down an octave as well, and that he was practically murmuring into the phone.

Sam had an idea, one that he had to slap over top the idea of What If this was a different conversation, What If he had his hand down his boxers, with Steve’s voice in his ear, encouraging him, and Steve would have his hand down his own pants, and Sam would be giving him instructions on that, too, and shut the hell up! This was not that conversation! Finish this conversation! _Have that conversation later._

“I think I know the perfect place to start,” he said.

“Yeah?” said Steve, and Sam was beginning to love that word, the way Steve said it. Always with a pretext of hesitation, an undertone of encouragement. A request for more.

Sam put his arm behind his head, smiling into the phone as the image solidified in his head.

“What’s Stark’s favorite restaurant?”


	6. glenlivet

Sam was beginning to regret painting himself as the Natasha in this scenario. Not because it was somehow demeaning to be ‘the woman’ on a date, but because he had never known how much awkwardness that entailed. Waiting to get picked up, for one. Not that he hadn’t ever waited for a ride from Steve. But usually waiting for a ride from a friend involved playing candy crush in his sweats, not sweating in a suit and tie. That tie (purple, and arguably the strongest part of his whole ensemble) felt more like a choker.

He supposed most women had the pre-date spa routine, the full shower, skincare, do your nails, pick an outfit, do your make-up, the whole thing. He had- the full shower. Put on the one proper date outfit he owned. Then spend the next thirty minutes wondering if it was creepy or appropriate to wear cologne.

Ultimately he went with creepy, and instantly regretted it the minute Steve showed up having come to a different conclusion.

He smelled amazing.

Steve hadn’t overdone it, he had spritzed it on with a restraint and tastefulness that would haunt Sam for the rest of the night. Just when he thought he had gotten over it, he would catch another whiff and be struck with the overpowering urge to plunge his face into Steve’s neck.

And Steve had brought flowers.

“Ta da,” said Steve. Dressed to the nines. _Probably by Romanoff_ , accused the voice in the back of Sam’s head. The part of him that didn’t resent her for her interference thanked her for her contribution to the Steve-themed spank bank, the new part dedicated to peeling that suit off of him. Preferably with his teeth.

“As instructed,” said Steve, and passed him the flowers with exactly zero romantic aplomb. “You didn’t specify, so I just went with roses. Everyone likes roses.”

“That generalizing will be the death of your love life, but I appreciate the gesture,” said Sam, taking them, and feeling like an idiot for how much he wasn’t lying. He thumbed over his shoulder. “Should I slap these in a vase before we go?”

“If that’s what people usually do when they get flowers.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Sam elected to leave them on the shelf next to the door. He didn’t invite Steve in; there was too much of a chance that he would never let him out again.

“That’s too bad,” said Steve. He stowed his hands in his well-fitted pockets, glanced past him into his home in exactly the way Sam wished he wouldn’t.

“What is?”

“That nobody’s brought you flowers.”

Sam busied himself locking up so he didn’t have to be face to face with Steve’s sincerity. When he had finished he turned clearing his throat, saying, “Okay. Flowers, check. Suit and tie, check. Time-” He checked his watch. His nice one. “You’re early.”

“Is that bad?” Steve crossed his arms. His questions had a different tone today. A little less, ‘did I fuck it up?’, a little more ‘you got a problem with that?’. The kind of challenging Sam totally wanted to call him on.

“A little overeager for a first date, but I guess it’s cute once you know them a bit better. And this is what, the third date?” As if he didn’t have the number memorized. “Maybe still too early, but, whatever, let’s go with cute.”

“I’ll take it,” said Steve.

Okay, the banter was going to have to come down about ten notches, or Sam was not gonna make it through the evening.

“Where are we headed?” he asked. “You managed to prize the name of a decent place out of Stark?”

“Even better,” said Steve, and Sam suspected he was about to learn the source of Steve’s fresh confidence. “I got him to sponsor the whole evening.” He pulled something out of his pocket and held it up between two fingers. “I present to you: Tony Stark’s credit card.”

“Please tell me you lifted that off him,” said Sam.

“I’m not that much of a fool for love,” said Steve. “I told him I had a hot date, and he insisted.”

“You tell him who with?”

“Nah. Told him, if the tiramisu was as good as he promised, I’d give him the details later.”

“Italian is pretty traditional for a romantic dinner.”

“You think Natasha would prefer something more unorthodox?” _Okay, Steve, I get it. Thanks for the reminder that this isn’t a **real** date._ The too-innocent innocence in Steve’s face twisted the knife.

“I don’t know about Natasha, but as long as Tony Stark is footing the bill, I’m not gonna complain.”

-

Steve had left a historical podcast on in the car, and went to turn it off with a gesture of apology, but Sam waved him away from the dial and let it play. He liked the insight into what Steve listened to when he was alone. He liked that it wasn’t even modern history, wasn’t even rational-Steve filling in more of the blank of his missing seventy years. It was something ancient and largely incomprehensible to his ears.

“What the hell is a Mycenaean?”

“Bronze Age Greek,” said Steve, refusing to accept the tease. “Listen up, maybe you'll  
learn something.”

Sam learned approximately nothing, he was too preoccupied with Steve's hands on the heel.

Okay, fine, he learned about Linear B.

-

“-but later archaeological work suggested the the devastation had taken place in another layer, and that remnants of boundaries from that era of the city could have easily maintained a population that size, actually making it borderline plausible that the Trojan war, or some version of it, took place in that location,” finished Steve, in complete mockery of himself, fully aware of what he sounded like and amping it up for Sam’s entertainment. The valet who met them did two successive double takes, one as he recognized Captain America, a second as he heard what he was talking about. Steve palmed him a tip in a very smooth way. He was getting progressively smoother as the date unfolded. Suspiciously smooth. Almost as if he had been coached already.

“What’s especially fascinating are Hittite texts referencing the city of Wilusa, and aggressions taking place at the same time period.”

“I feel like you're just making up words at this point,” said Sam.

“You wanna know about the Ahhiyawa texts? You do, don’t you.”

“Shut up and open the stupid door. You’re already negative three points for the history lecture, you better start racking them up or I’m headed home with the first winked eye.”

Steve didn’t have to open the door, it was that kind of restaurant, there was someone waiting to do so who was honestly dressed better than them. But Steve waved Sam in first with gallantry.

The maître d' was awaiting them with a bright smile. Steve didn’t even manage to get out all of “We have a reservation-” before she broke in with “Rogers, party of four?”

Well that wiped all the gallant smugness off of Steve’s face.

“Party of four?” he echoed.

“The other members of your party have been seated.” Her smile was unrelenting. “If you’ll follow me.”

Steve turned and stared at Sam as if _he_ had orchestrated this.

Sam crossed his arms. “Don’t look at me man. This is your date.”

-

The maître d' walked them to the table, a red lit one in the back in an intimate niche. An appetizer (some kind of deconstructed calamari, it looked like) was sitting out with the wine and the bread. The other two guests sat on the far end of the table. Well-dressed. Familiar.

“Man of the hour.” Tony Stark raised his glass. “Or rather- men. Mindy, could we have some more glasses?”

“Of course, Mr. Stark.” Mindy beamed them into their seats. Sam and Steve settled with the identical, slow reluctance of two people falling into a trap, swapping looks.

Pepper was with him. Seeing the looks on their faces, she gave him Tony look of her own, one that said, _You didn't._

Stark, wholly unrepentant, got straight to needling Steve. “You didn't think I was going to miss the opportunity to meet your secret date? She's lovely, by the way. Calamari?” He pushed the plate forward

“Tony,” said Steve, arms crossed, in a voice that was ten seconds away from bouncing his head off the wall.

Mindy teleported back with two more glasses, and Tony himself filled them, pressing one on Sam with an under the breath, “I see you finally got your answer to that question. So!” Tony settled back into his chair. “Where did you crazy kids meet?”

“Tony,” said Steve again.

"I gotta say, it's always nice to see these things work out," said Tony. "The whole 'will they, won't they', it gets old."

"Tony," said Steve, one last time, in a tone that left no room for argument. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Tony threw up his hands, tossed his napkin on the table, and followed Steve out of the niche to be harangued.

Sam and Pepper sat in awkward silence for a minute. Sam took the opportunity to drain his glass. He was sure it was some rare vintage but he barely tasted it, instead thinking longingly of the six pack in his fridge. Back home. Away from this budding clusterfuck.

“I am really very sorry about this,” said Pepper, with sincerity, and less embarrassment than resignation. “This is so invasive. I didn't know it was going to be...” She left what it was open ended, probably out of politeness, but the assumption on her face was clear.

“It's not,” said Sam quickly, before even getting his story straight with Steve. “Not like that.”

“It's none of my business,” she said firmly. “And it's none of Tony’s. Just say the word and I will drag him out by his ear.”

“If Steve doesn't first.” Sam helped himself to the bread and another glass of red. “It's really- it's not like _that_.”

To her credit, Pepper didn't didn't ask what it was like. 

“There's a seventy year old scotch on their highest shelf,” she said. “It wouldn't make a dent in his pockets, but he will resent that someone else broke it open first. Shall I have Mindy bring it out?”

Mindy was so quick, and Steve was so good at haranguing, that they'd each had a glass of the ludicrously aged scotch before the two of them returned to the table. Steve was pink in the ears in what have been embarrassment or anger or both, and he retook his seat without glancing at Sam. Sam shot back his scotch, already praying for the night to be over.

“Is that the Glenlivet?” demanded Tony.

“I thought your friends deserved a taste of something top shelf after you hijacked their evening,” said Pepper, just as unrepentant as he was.

“If I hijacked anything, it was these two trying to scam me out of a meal under romantic pretenses.” Tony began to butter a roll, looking lofty. It was impossible to tell if Steve had insisted the date was platonic or told him not to ruin the opposite, but either way, he had gotten Tony to hold his tongue.

Mindy popped up, just before the silence almost prompted more tortured dialogue, to ask if they were ready to order. Pepper essentially ordered for them all, with the air of having the menu memorized, the chef in her pocket, and an intuitive sense of palate. Sam was just glad he didn't have to pronounce anything.

The portion sizes were restrained. Great. Less to eat, more time to talk. Sam focused on the booze and pretended that this hot mess would somehow end in necking in the back of Steve's car. It was already a disaster, so why not imagine the best possible outcome?

Tony couldn't help himself.

“So how long has this been going on?” He pointed between the two of them with his silverware, not saying what ‘this’ was.

“There's nothing going on,” said Sam, the exact moment Steve said “about a month.”

“Tony,” said Pepper, echoing Steve's tone and glare.

“You don't want to know?” He asked her. “You're not curious?”

“It's none of my business, Tony,” she berated him in an undertone. “And it's none of your business, and if I had known this was going to be the situation I never would have let Happy turn on the car.”

“Oh please, what’s wrong with a little meddling in a friend's love life-”

“You know perfectly well that this is unacceptable behavior, and you're lucky you have the friends you do, who tolerate it-”

“What friends?” asked Steve, tearing up a piece of bread.

Sam downed, what, his third glass?

He was almost grateful when they were interrupted, by some blonde woman who popped in holding a clutch, a man behind her, a woman who Tony looked at and grimaced.

“Everhart, don't you have better things to do than stalk me for a headline at dinner?”

“Just happened to be dining in as well,” said the woman, but with a glint in her eye. The man behind her heaved a sigh and checked her watch. “Didn't expect to see you here, Tony, or miss Potts, let alone with two other Avengers.”

“Yes, Miss Everhart, we eat dinner,” said Tony. “What a headline. ‘Stark has spaghetti. Scandal when meatball, all covered in cheese, rolled off the table when somebody sneezed’. Bitt lengthy, but hey, that's what you have editors for. You guys can afford an editor, right?”

Completely undeterred, the woman eyed the table, Pepper’s uneasy expression, Steve looking fixedly at the wall and Sam not looking up from his glass.

“Double date?” She guessed, with horrible intuition.

“Four’s company,” said Tony. “Now you mind taking the long way out, or do you want the next headline to read ‘Tony Stark spilled his pasta on my nice jacket: the Christine Everhart story’?”

“I think I've got enough of a story,” said the woman, with a too-sweet smile. “Lovely to see you again, Mr. Stark, Miss Potts. Avengers.”

Steve was too damn polite, he actually nodded her off, while Tony rolled his eyes and a meatball onto his fork, remarking, “No better way to ruin the mood than celebritay, eh, guys?”

“I think you ruined the mood pretty well on your own,” said Steve, getting up. “We'll pass on the tiramisu. Sam?”

Sam was only too happy to abandon ship. He killed his last glass and got up only slightly woozily.

“Oh, come on, Steve,” objected Tony.

“Night, Pepper,” said Steve. “It was good to see you again.”

“Same, Steve,” she said, with a look of sympathy at him, and a look at Tony that promised further lectures.

“What?” When they had left, Tony looked at her, and her scowl. “What? How was I supposed to know?”

-

It had gotten dark, and the valet pulled up with the headlights on, hopping out and handing the keys back over to Steve, Steve who had been watching Sam like a hawk ever since his first stumble down the stairs. He waited until he was behind the wheel, doors slamming shut, to ask, “Are you drunk?”

“Only way I could think of to piss off Stark,” said Sam, who was. “Drink all the good stuff.”

He thought for a moment that Steve was pissed, either still at Tony, or at him, or both, but then Steve chuckled.

“Jesus,” he said. “I'm imagining zero points? That was awful.”

“Don't flatter yourself, Cap.” Sam rolled down the window and reclined back in the chair, closing his eyes and letting the cool air soothe his booze-hot face. “We are deep into the negative numbers. I'm not sure how you're going to recover from this one.”

“Well, I had something else in my pocket,” said Steve. “Here.” He passed Sam his phone. “Find directions to the nearest 24/7 grocery store.”

“Okay. Why?”

“It's a surprise.”

“Hope it's better than tiramisu,” grumbled Sam, and went scrolling to find the nearest shop.

-

The teen left staffing the cash register that evening was not prepared for two Avengers in suits, one of them drunk, the other plopping down a head of lettuce and a bag of grapes. Steve made cheery late-night small talk (‘burning the midnight oil?’) without acknowledging his identity, and the cashier didn't either, providing the wrong change with bug eyes. Steve politely returned the extra ten without a word, thanked her, and they returned to the car.

Sam sat still tipsy with a bagful of grapes and a head of lettuce in his lap, as Steve drove them off to places unknown.

“Okay,” said Sam. “Seductively feeding someone grapes, I guess I can see that, but I'm not sure I want to know what you're planning on doing with the lettuce.”

“Neither of them are for you,” said Steve. They were coming to the edge of the city, not exactly rural, but as close as you could get while still staying in the range of home. There were few lights, few signs, many trees, and Sam lost track of exactly where they were. But Steve knew this route by heart. He didn't have Sam check the maps this time.

With the cool air on his face, the darkness interspersed only with occasional lamplight, Sam felt as if he might drowse off there in the car. Honestly he would have been content to stay in that car, half-drunk, holding a lettuce and a bag of grapes, watching Steve drive, forever. There was a peaceful quiet between them. Their game of dating history had been a horror show so far, but just like this, together, not saying a word, it felt right in a way that hurt if he thought about it too long.

The wheels grumbled over gravel, and the car crunched to a halt.

“You fall asleep?” asked Steve. His voice was almost soft, like he wouldn't wake him if he had.

“Nope.” Sam tossed him the lettuce. Steve had good reflexes, and caught it neatly. “Where are we? There's not much point docking your score anymore, but this does feel like a drove-me-to-the-middle-of-nowhere serial killer kind of situation. Not romantic.”

“Just wait,” said Steve, and he was sounding pleased with himself again. He got out of the car, poked his head back in, and said “C’mon.”

Sam was loathe to get out of his comfortable seat in the comfortable car, which was still teasing him with little ghosts of Steve's cologne. But he did. He got out, straightened up, and leaned back against the car door.

“Wow,” he said.

There was a lake, partially masked by bushes and trees, but what he could see sparkled in the dark in a perfect reflection of the sky, where the stars had begun to come out.

“Romantic enough?” asked Steve.

“I didn't even know this was out here- wherever this is.”

“Bit of a drive, but I like to come out here sometimes to jog, to think.”

“And eat grapes?” Sam hefted his bag, still waiting on an explanation for the groceries.

Steve smiled, an expression Sam could only see in the way he stood, and in very faint starlight. “Come on,” he said.

They walked a dirt path down towards the water’s edge. As they approached, there came a murmuring noise, and Sam saw some gray bundles unfolding near the water’s edge.

“What the hell…?”

“Most people feed them bread, but shredded veggies and fruit are actually better for them,” said Steve. “I looked it up.”

A little squad (squad? What did you call a group of waterfowl?) of ducks came waddling towards them, gently quacking.

“I cannot believe this,” said Sam.

“Here, throw some grapes.” Steve had begun to shred lettuce with his bare hands, and toss it to the eager ducks.

They fed the ducks for a good thirty minutes, sitting on a bench down by the water, watching the birds bicker over the larger hunks of lettuce. When they had emptied their pockets the ducks gradually toddled back off towards the water, and with gentle quacking, started to head off out across the water.

And the two of them sat on the bench looking out at the water, and the moon had begun to rise and ripple on the lake.

“How often do you come out here?” asked Sam.

“Not too often.” Steve looked out at the lake, and Sam could see his face in the pale moonlight. Peaceful. “This kind of thing loses its magic if you do it too much, I think. You want to save it for a special occasion. Special person.”

“That is-” Sam paused. “Extremely romantic, actually.” Heartsqueezingly so. He would have given anything to wrap an arm around Steve. Drinking had been a bad idea. It was blurring the line between game and reality, want and imagination.

Steve moved over on the bench and dropped his head to rest it on Sam's shoulder.

Warmth flooded his chest. He was glad Steve was on the other side of his chest, so he couldn't feel how hard his heart was beating.

Exactly as he wished he had done on the Fourth of July, Sam extricated his arm and wrapped it around Steve's waist, pulling him close. And Steve let himself be pulled in, actually nestling against him. Sam felt swamped with Steve's warmth pressed against his side, and his own body heat, flushing through his body. Steve didn't remark on any of it, only nestled his head more comfortably against his chest. Sam couldn't resist. He pressed his face into Steve's hair and lost himself in the way he smelled. The way he felt. Aching with how much he wanted to wrap his other arm around him, move his head the vital three inches it would take to reach his mouth, bury his fingers in his hair.

Steve reached up for his hand, and wound their fingers together. He let out a slow breath that was nearly a sigh.

Sam couldn't see his face, but he could feel contentment in every place their bodies were touching. Relief.

Romancing, dating, games aside - maybe that peace was all he wanted.

Sam ran his thumb over his knuckles just as he had done the first time in the coffee shop, and reached up to run a gentle hand through his hair, and felt Steve melting against him. So full of strength and yet somehow, lying against him, so soft and so tired. He wondered how often Steve let himself be this soft, this undefended. He wondered if he ever did.

He didn't know how long they sat there. Steve breathed softly against him, he left his face in Steve's hair, and occasionally, they ran their fingers together again as if making sure they were still interlinked.

“I have to take the car back,” mumbled Steve eventually. He sounded half asleep. Even as he mumbled, he nuzzled more deeply into Sam's shoulder. Sam almost held him tighter. Instead, he gently pulled his hand away.

“Better go, then,” he said, and hated himself for saying it.

They retwined their fingers in the car, neither of them saying a word about it, neither prompting it. Steve steered with one hand, and the other he reached out to Sam. They let their locked hands dangle between the seats, unremarked upon.

When they reached his place, Sam was faced with the final need to release Steve, and he wasn't sure he had ever resented something more in his life. There was no way of knowing if he was ever going to be that close to him again. Close enough to feel him breathing. Feel his hair on his cheek. Press their palms together. Fuck.

“You need help getting to the door, or you sober enough now?” asked Steve, and he hadn't let go of him yet, and now it was his thumb running over Sam's palm, and he was looking at him in a way that wasn't wistful, was empty of longing, but full of something more horrible and sincere.

“I'm sober,” said Sam.

He broke their linked hands himself, because he knew he wouldn't be able to stand feeling Steve pull away from him.

“Text me,” said Steve. “So I know you didn't pass out in the shower or something.”

What would have happened, if he had invited Steve up to the door? Invited him inside? Asked him to stay?

He couldn't even think about it.

“Sure,” he said, and waved him off, and put his hands in his pockets and watched, until he saw Steve's headlights disappear from view.

-

He didn't bother to take a shower. He didn't bother to do more than take off his tie and kick off his shoes before he fell into bed. He was still a bit buzzed, and he was tired, but more than that, he thought he could still smell Steve on his jacket.

He rubbed his tired eyes, and he looked at his ceiling, and he thought, _I can't do this._

Going to dinner, getting coffee, dressing up, none of that stupid game mattered.

He couldn't go and feed ducks in the dark, at Steve's private lake, and hold him, and smell his hair as the moon rose, and do so under the guise of someone else. Of some imaginary person. As practice. He couldn't do it.

He was laying there in bed not aroused, not fantasizing, but half sick, from the stupid scotch, and from the fact that Steve wasn't in his bed or on his couch, that he couldn't just reach out and touch him, couldn't pull Steve to him to let him find another hour of peace lying against him. Sam thought of Steve's own exhaustion, the obviousness of his relief, and he himself felt exhausted, and dull, and empty.

He had known he was in love with Steve for months. Maybe since the first time they had met, when Steve had helped him up from that tree, post-jog, and Sam had first felt the warmth of his palm. That had been elating, followed by briefly miserable, but he had managed to push it aside after careful observation proved that Steve did not date. Steve did not flirt. As far as he could tell, Steve was celibate, either by choice or out of grief, as if something human in him had been frozen and was still lost in the ice. Maybe some things didn't survive seventy years of isolation.

And that had been fine. Because he loved him, he would take any amount of bullets for him, he would drag Steve's stupid bloody maimed body from the wreckage and berate him for his recklessness, and they would watch each other's backs as only two old soldiers could. He could and would do any of that for Steve.

But he couldn't come so close, close to a semblance of normalcy of love, of something real, and find that there was nothing there to hold on to.

He couldn't come this close to Steve, and not have him.

It hurt too bad.

Worse than being shot. Worse than cracked ribs. Morphine could touch that. A few buds could help that.

Not even seventy year old Glenlivet could touch this.

His phone buzzed, and he had a text from Steve, only a question mark.

_‘Not dead,’_ he texted back.

A minute later, his phone buzzed again.

_‘Sorry about tonight. Later this week, sushi?’_

Dispirited, he texted back. _‘Natasha's not a fan, I've asked.’_ Just let him take the soft no and let the game die.

Okay, he was the coward. He was the gay chicken. Whatever.

Buzz.

One more text.

_‘What does Natasha have to do with this?’_


	7. hair of the dog

Sam might have thought he dreamt the previous night, the lake, the bench, if it weren't for the text records and crippling hangover.

And Steve's flowers. They were still sitting out on the shelf by the door, wilting.

He winced to the kitchen to turn on the coffee pot, washing down two aspirin and a tall glass of water. His tongue felt like sandpaper and tasted like he had gotten drunk on lakewater.

He leaned on the counter while he waited for the coffee to brew, letting his mind tune out to some fuzzy channel. He didn't think about the previous evening. He didn't want to, especially with such a bad headache. He didn't want to do anything. He especially didn't want to leave the house, turn in for training exercises, exchange banter with the team, endure Steve's teasing over his sloppy drinking. He didn't want to see Steve at all.

He didn't have a vase, so he stuck the roses in his tallest glass, filled it with water, and wondered exactly how long it would be before they finished wilting and started dropping dead petals on his countertop.

Sam left the coffee brewing, and he went back to sleep.

-

His doorbell woke him. It chimed gently, but he still wanted to find its box and rip it out of the wall. He almost just pulled his pillow over his head. He looked bleary eyed at his phone. One in the afternoon. What looked like a few texts, maybe a missed call, but he was too fuzzy to be able to read the tiny, too-bright letters.

The doorbell chimed again. He chucked his pillow at the wall.

_Fine._

Three guesses who was at the door.

Steve had two coffees, and a little box. “You need a shave,” he observed. “Did you sleep in those?”

Sam had forgot he was still wearing his date night clothes.

“Hang on,” he grumped, too hungover to be embarrassed. He let Steve in (no risk involved there, his body hurt too much to even think about sex) and went to go throw on his sweats and a t shirt.

When he returned Steve was sitting, not on the couch, but at his table, looking over at the counter. “Should've thought that you would already have coffee,” he said.

“Didn't drink any yet,” said Sam, sitting across the table and claiming the coffee Steve had brought him. “And you can never have enough caffeine with a hangover.”

“Pepper brought this by last night,” said Steve, pushing the little box over the table to him. “Said she wanted to apologize for Tony’s behavior.”

“I don't suppose _he's_ come by to apologize,” said Sam, taking it.

“Not really Tony's style. But he'll find some way to make up for it by the end of the week.”

Sam popped off the top. It was the tiramisu. He winced. It was probably amazing. But at the moment, just a glimpse of mascarpone made his stomach roil.

“I'll save it for later.”

“Don't want it?” asked Steve.

“Dude. Have you ever had a hangover in your life?”

“Not for lack of trying.”

“Here.” Sam shoved it back across the table and took of swig of the coffee. Too hot, but he didn't care. “One of us may as well enjoy it.”

Steve took it back, but didn't seem interested. He didn't look for a fork. Instead he looked over at the countertop, where his flowers were sitting wilting in their makeshift vase. He moved as if to do something, a twitch of the fingers, and then stopped. He opened and then shut his mouth.

There had never been a fuller or more awkward silence. The hangover had temporarily overtaken the heartache of the night before, but now Sam felt a fresh pain, looking at Steve, who was looking at the tabletop, and he wanted him to leave.

“Don't really feel up for a jog today,” he said, hoping Steve would accept the not-so-subtle hint, and go.

“I didn't come for a jog. I just wanted to bring you this.” Steve's voice was subdued. He looked at the flowers, looked down at his own coffee, and rubbed an eye.

“I'm sorry about last night,” he said.

Sam shrugged. “Tony's an asshole. That's not your fault.”

“No- I mean after. At the lake. In the car.”

Sam had already felt sick, and now his stomach plunged worse. Steve's rejection was already burning in his ears.

“It's fine,” he said.

“I shouldn't have done that,” said Steve. “You were drunk.”

Sam blinked at Steve in a flush of incredulity. _That_ was his regret? A question of consent over hand holding?

“I'm sorry,” said Steve. He looked at the tabletop, not making eye contact with Sam, as though he felt he had orchestrated the whole evening for lecherous purposes.

“Yeah,” said Sam. Feeling somewhat giddy and unreal as he went ahead, and just said it. “Actually. You definitely should have done it. Highlight of my week. Month, actually.” He didn't say ‘year’, but that would have been true, too.

Steve looked at him, first in a 'stop kidding around' way, and then seeing the look in his eyes, knowing what Sam's honesty looked like, believing him, flushing. He shook his head.

“You know, you're an awful teacher,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“I still have no idea how to do this.”

And he looked at Sam with a realer version of the look he had given him before their first date, a look of _What do I do now?_

Sam took a burning sip of coffee, to match the burning in his stomach, and his tone was a thousand times more casual than he felt. “Bullshit,” he said. “You bought the coffee, didn't you? Dating step number one.”

He got up. As Sam rounded the table, he saw with gratification how Steve steadied himself with a hand flat on the table, licked his lips, looked up at him, looked at his lips.

Sam re-locked their fingers on the table, leaned down, and dodged Steve's mouth to kiss his cheek. “Morning breath,” he murmured into his ear. “It's really bad.”

Steve laughed - a little breathless, a little grateful.

Sam straightened up. Neither of them unlaced their fingers. They both exchanged looks, making sure that they were understood, silently assuring themselves and each other, in the silent language they spoke fluently with one another. Sam savored the full blue intensity of Steve's eyes. “What do you want to do about this?” He asked. Generally. Specifically.

“Just, this,” said Steve simply, lifting their hands. “This is good.”

“'Just this'?” echoed Sam.

And immediately Steve was a fish out of water, having to contemplate what else there was.

“Just this is fine,” promised Sam immediately.

“I want whatever you want,” said Steve, keeping his grip, almost as if he thought Sam would walk away if he did differently.

“You realize this is going to turn into an endless cycle of ‘I want what you want’, right?”

“Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure you're the only one who actually knows what they want.”

Steve looked at him askance, and Sam cleared his throat transparently.

“I'm not a nun, Sam,” said Steve, sounding amused, but also exasperated. “I'm just a little bit behind the curve.”

“Well fortunately, unlike you, I don't generalize between dates.” Sam indulged in running his free hand through Steve's hair, in running a thumb over Steve's cheek, in Steve letting him do it. “We'll go at your pace.”

Steve turned his head to press his lips against Sam's wrist, murmuring, “Promise?”

“Promise,” said Sam, even as his pulse skyrocketed, and he had to fight the urge to grab Steve's chin and kiss him properly, morning mouth and all.


	8. tabloid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i started a new fic. it's about multiple universes and cursed pirate gold. all the avengers are there. go read it if you like that kind of shit

To say that Sam was walking on sunshine would be a horrible cliché and also the truth.

The confession of - liking each other? Wanting to do this for real? Whatever it was - had culminated in watching Cutthroat Kitchen on his couch, and at first very hesitant and then progressively closer cuddling on the couch, and it turned out that the best cure for a hangover wasn't coffee, wasn't gravy or bacon, it was getting Steve in his arms when he was wearing a thin t shirt instead of a suit jacket, when Sam could have IDed every muscle group from touch alone. It wasn’t _not_ sexual, but he never put his hands under that shirt, never put his lips on Steve's mouth, or his neck, or any of the other hundred places he wanted to, and mercifully (he was going to have to go to church and light a candle for this one) he never popped a boner against Steve's hip.

It was comfortable.

It was really fucking nice.

And the only thing better than basking in those memories was knowing that he was going to get Steve in his arms again. He didn't know when, or how, they had made no plans, but on his way out Steve had made that promise of a kiss into his palm again, and said, “See you later?” with real sincere hope.

And Sam had said, “Yeah.”

“Morning, Banner.” Sam greeted him the second he saw him, in the kitchen, pulling out a Naked juice and jumping when Sam startled him. Did that guy ever eat a piece of cake or something?

“Morning Sam.” Banner leaned on the counter, shaking his juice with a bemused expression, watching him making the communal coffee. “You seem…”

“Post coital?” suggested another voice.

Romanoff leaned over the counter, chin propped on her hands. Banner, trapped between the two of them, took a deep gulp of his juice.

Sam pointed at her. “Fuck off, Romanoff.”

“You know, it’s the strangest thing,” she said. “Rogers and I were going to grab a bite to eat the other night, and he totally bailed on me. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, Sam, would you?”

“Get fucked,” he said, without venom, digging through the cupboards for his shaker bottle.

“What do you think, Bruce?”

“Oh, I am so not a part of this conversation,” said Banner, and took advantage of Sam's digging to dodge out of the kitchen.

“Hey, Bruce.” Sam interrupted him. “That uh, help you gave. Good stuff. Thanks.”

“You're welcome,” said Banner, who looked at once sincere and also like he wished he had never gotten involved. Sam let him escape.

“What about my help?” asked Natasha. “Don't try and tell me nothing happened, you look like you just beat cancer.”

“Who says I didn't?” Damned if he was going to give her a word.

“Okay, I get it,” she said. “You're mad I messed in your private life. Boo hoo. You don't think I'll get every detail from Rogers later? He and I like this.” She crossed her fingers. “Buttt, I guess you know how that is now, huh, Sam?”

“There's only one detail you need to know, Romanoff.” He had found his shaker bottle, and he pointed it threateningly at her. “And that is that Rogers is off the market. Capiche?”

“While you're on an honest streak, maybe you should let him hear you say that,” she said, with a wink, but also an air of loosening her claws. “That kind of protective jealousy is a panty dropper across the board.”

She grabbed an apple from the countertop and took off with a loud, smug crunch.

“She's right, you know,” said Clint from the couch, reading his newspaper.

“Get fucked, Barton.”

-

Steve was a pleasure to watch work in general, not just for obvious reasons (pecs), but for anyone who knew what athleticism was. For someone with inhuman strength, Steve didn’t waste it. He didn’t smash his opponents (Banner had that pretty well covered), he disarmed neatly, and when needed, disassembled neatly. Against the bots which Stark had half-heartedly designed and relegated to target practice ages ago, Steve was an artist.

They came in a swarm. To anyone else they would have seemed a nightmare of flying blades (all designed to break apart uselessly upon impact, of course, not that it made them less intimidating), but Steve stood and waited for them casually, lined up his shot, and took it. He hefted his shield, and all at once he was discus thrower, frisbee player, and pool shooter, as it smashed through the first bot and bounced off three more, then neatly back into his hand. The second rank descended as he caught it. He bounced a bot off overhead, flipping it over his back, and the last one, simply grabbed by the back of the head and smashed it facefirst into the ground.

It took him only moments to wreak neat, thorough destruction.

“Show-off,” accused Sam, calling from the sidelines.

He saw the smile in Steve’s body as he pulled off his helmet, as he called back, “Hey, didn’t see you there,” in an open and undisguised lie.

Sometimes he practiced in civvies, sometimes in full uniform. Today was the latter. Sam couldn’t say he didn’t prefer the civvies, especially when the civvies involved a tight white t shirt, but hell. Steve looked good in anything.

As Sam approached, Steve tucked away his shield, put his boot on the neck of the last wiggling bot, and knowingly popped the head right out of its joint. The head rolled away on the ground.

“Dude,” said Sam. “I think you already killed it.”

“Yeah, but now there’s more for Tony to clean up,” said Steve.

“Still getting revenge for the other night, huh?”

“Has he apologized to you yet?” asked Steve, and when Sam shook his head, said, “Yeah. Still getting revenge.” He looked down at the bot head. “Pretty poor revenge, though. He’ll probably just take the opportunity to equip them with flamethrowers, and get a kick out of doing it.”

“It’s cute how bad you are at this,” said Sam, stowing his thumbs in his pockets to resist the urge to get touchy.

“I’d rather beat up murderbots than my friends.” Steve shrugged.

“What if I asked you to do it for me?” asked Sam. “Put some itching powder in his boxers, for my hurt feelings? Grand romantic gesture?”

“Is that what you want?” asked Steve. He didn’t share Sam’s reservations about touching, apparently, reaching out to hook a thumb through his belt loop and pulling him in closer. “Itching powder? Isn’t that a little juvenile?”

Sam had to put a hand on his chest to maintain a bit of distance, because if he got too close he was going to end up putting Steve up against a wall, overly complicated straps on that uniform be damned. “You got any better ideas?” he asked, and yeah, it came out really sexual, because Steve’s hair was mussed from the helmet, and his skin was still warm from his little workout.

“Okay,” came a voice. “Can you not?”

“Speak of the devil,” muttered Steve, giving Sam one last look and releasing him.

Tony Stark had come to retrieve his maimed tech, looking mussed from probably another long night at the drawing board, and he gave them and specifically Steve a dirty look as he plucked up the last bot’s head. “Really? You had to decapitate it.”

Steve gave Sam an _I told you_ look.

“And how long are we going to do this hilarious ‘Tony, the last to know’ thing?” He gestured at the two of them. “You realize everyone in the building knows for a fact that you guys are what, boyfriends?”

Both of them floundered for a second, looking at each other, Sam giving Steve a mute shrug. “I’m cool with that,” he said.

“Even outside the building.” Tony was fiddling with the neck joint. “You two are about as subtle as a Hulk. But by all means, it’s not like a new wrench thrown into the team dynamic is anything I might need to know about. You were never so annoyingly private before you and Natasha became best girlfriends. I think she’s a bad influence on you.”

“What do you mean, ‘outside the building’?” Steve was suddenly frowning.

“You don’t read the gossip columns, quelle surprise. I don’t either, not unless they’re especially funny and about me, but I got this forwarded to me this morning.” He pulled something up on his phone, tossed it to Steve. “Looks like our friend in the press is not above leaking hints to her buddies at various scandal dot coms.”

Steve’s brow creased as he scanned whatever it was.

“What is it?” asked Sam, already regretting asking. He had a feeling he didn’t want to know.

Steve wordlessly passed him the phone.

The headline read: _Another Blow to Traditional American Values: Gay Agenda Claims the Captain._

The headline wasn’t even the worst part.

The worst part were the pictures, taken from what looked like across the street from Sam's house, of his front door, him leaning in the frame, Steve on his way out. Sam looking sex-mussed from his stupid hangover. That last moment they had shared, an intimate one, Sam’s tease, and Steve’s ‘Promise’. Now plastered in blunt, high quality, zoomed in pictures for the world to see.

Sam felt hot, with anger, and embarrassment.

He could barely bring himself to look at Steve, but he did, and his stomach plummeted. Steve wasn’t looking at him. He wasn’t looking at anyone or anything in the room, but into his own projections of what this meant. Not knowing what that was. Ten times more a fish out of water than Sam had already made him.

Sam read him like a book, knew his next look by heart, knew it from every failed mission, every mistake that had caused an injury, or cost a life. A look he fucking hated. Steve looking lost, but also looking as though he were certain of one thing, and that one thing was that this was his fault.


	9. good morning america

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for serious injury, blood and stuff

The latest catastrophe had brought friends.

 _When it rains, it fucking pours,_ thought Sam, standing in literal rain, a hot subtropical rain that made him miss Afghanistan.

Malaysia. Not the field of war he was used to. And the differences were most obvious from the Falcon’s vantage point. From the top of the embassy, shrouded in rain, he could see the alien rooftops, a mishmash of old and modern styles, remnants of pre-colonial rooftops, minarets, and other buildings, ones that wouldn't have been out of place in any good-sized American city.

He didn't know shit about Malaysia, and the alienation of being deaf and mute to the language and blind to half the signs, made him ache even harder for his couch and an energy bar.

“I’m in position,” he said into his earpiece.

“Copy that.” It was Rhodes’ voice in his ear, Rhodes taking point while Sam watched from the skies. Below, on a separate frequency, Steve and Natasha posed as honeymooners, and Stark, as his ostentatious self, taking a jet’s day trip to Malaysia to buy more ostentatious things. Tony's presence would assure that the enemy's eyes were on him, allowing the rest of them to operate unseen.

It was a good plan. It was an odd relief to be taking the orders for once, instead of having to construct his own. But he couldn't help but think bitterly that Rhodes, and probably others of the same opinion, had put him and Steve on opposite ends of the chessboard on purpose.

Not that he could blame them.

-

_“You broke his camera?”_

Anonymity suited Sam. He liked his useful-but-not-a-necessity role in the Avengers. All of the perks, a lot fewer moral crises about accidentally dropping a building on someone. If he had learned anything from hanging out with the most powerful beings on the planet, it was that power was often more of a curse than a blessing. Sam could command a unit, gain the trust and good will of a few good men ™, but being a Hero would have meant giving up his freedom to drink fruity beverages in public unrecognized and unabashed, his ability to get drunk at a dive bar where they knew him only as Good At Darts Guy, and his nice and quiet 6 am jogs. In short, his anonymity.

These days anonymity was hard to come by.

There were familiar strangers on his block half the time now. He knew they were waiting to catch Captain America coming out his front door. They were out of luck there, because Steve didn't come over anymore. The two of them had mutually agreed that the best way to address the headlines was to lay low, give the paparazzi nothing, and wait for it all to blow over. How long could they build a story out of a few shots of Cap showing himself out?

But that meant no visits. No dates. No coffees, no dinners, no movies, no walks in the park. They didn't even go for their shared jogs anymore. All the dating games they had played had been ripped out from under them, before they had the chance to play them out in reality.

With no place to go, they had only the tower, and he hated it. There was no way to be romantic during a mandatory meeting or a training exercise. What was he going to do? Hold Steve's hand while Stark blathered about the next big thing in the world of arc reactors? Swap soulful looks after Natasha had given him a black eye?

They shared sparse moments between work, hesitating in empty hallways like they were a secret, and hell if Sam was going to kiss him then, when at any minute a high clearance janitor was going to sweep past with a mop and a puff of bleach smell.

Tony had grown impatient with the whole thing immediately. “Did you see that piece they ran about me last week?” he said, throwing down the tabloid in front of Steve. “Said I sleep in a hyperbaric chamber, like Michael Jackson. Which, come on. One time. Who cares if people know you're an item? Isn't this a big fat victory for American equality? The real headline should be that you're getting some action for the first time since you defrosted.”

“It's not about headlines, Tony,” said Steve. “It's about privacy.”

He said privacy, but Sam, getting coffee a few feet away, thought he felt an inkling of embarrassment under it. Or was that his own embarrassment?

“You don't think Pepper and I have had to deal with this? A month ago someone ran a bit saying she was a man. Asked her to comment on it. You know what she said?”

“What,” said Steve flatly, in the voice of knowing that Tony was going to tell him either way.

“Said her aunt had made the transition a year ago and how dare they insinuate there was anything wrong with transgender people. Got on the horn, organized an event, raised about a hundred thousand for an organization that aids homeless transgender youth. Just turn it around on them, Steve. Show the world that _they're_ the assholes. Just get on TV in front of God and America and say that you love this man, god dammit, and freedom to love is part of what you stand for. See? I basically wrote the speech for you.”

Steve got up, leveraging his superior inches over Tony as he did when he was his own quiet version of pissed, and said, “Don't put words in my mouth, Tony.” And he left.

Sam was silently, endlessly grateful that Steve didn't take Tony's advice, and that he didn't ask him to. Sam wasn't a sappy romantic. But he had promised Steve that they would go at his pace, stay within his comfort zone, and he knew sure as hell that a dramatic public announcement was nowhere near that zone. If being with Steve meant stagnating, and waiting hollowly for the right moment, that was fine.

Too bad it didn't work.

Sam went on his jogs alone, now, but he still went on them. And they were still his quiet time, his pre and rising dawn moments of peace, until the asshole with the camera and recorder accosted him about mile into his jogging route. Douchebag basically popped out of the bushes.

“Falcon! Care to comment on the nature of your relationship with Steve Rogers?”

Sam just stared at him, his stupid press uniform. It was six thirty in the damn morning.

“Are you kidding me right now?” he asked.

“When did the relationship begin?” The man was completely undeterred.

“I don't have time for this.”

“What's Captain America like in bed?”

Sam broke the guy's camera.

“He deserved it,” he said later, not defending himself as much as insulting the asshole.

“He's pressing assault charges,” said Rhodes, who was again taking point as the most responsible team member, with his long years of cleaning up after Tony coming in handy once more. “You realize that if you two are trying to stay on the down-low, this is the complete opposite of what you should be doing?”

“I'll buy him a new one.”

“That's not the problem or the solution here.”

“What is the solution, then?”

Rhodes, wearing his unpopular-opinion face, gave the group (most of them had gathered to witness the blowout, Steve standing by in silent defense of Sam) a measured look to guess how they would respond. “We can release an official apology, deal with the charges, I've got stacks of those form letters. And then you issue either a concrete denial or an admission of the relationship. Nobody cares one way or another. It's the question mark that's causing problems.”

“I'm not going to go on Good Morning America and talk about my love life,” said Steve.

“And if he isn't, neither am I," agreed Sam.

Rhodes didn't even fight them on it. “I'm not a relationship counselor,” he said. “Just whatever the hell you guys decide to do, don't let it affect the team.”

-

Steve caught him in the hall, as he often did, but with a different, more reluctant hand.

“Can I talk to you?”

The rec room, with its pool table, its dartboard with Clint’s last winning score on it, its broken flatscreen from when Thor didn't take well to losing at wii sports and which they had left to mock him, was empty.

Steve leaned on the pool table. The balls were still scattered,from a game forgotten in alarm bells, some rush to go preserve innocent lives.

Sam stowed his hands in his pockets instead of touching him. As always when they were alone, he felt the urge to take Steve's face in his hands, lean him back and kiss him on the mouth, but as always, the moment was wrong. And he refused to kiss him if it wasn't properly, if he couldn't give Steve the whole nine yards, the fireworks. He had planned that kiss for what felt like decades and damned if he was gonna screw it up. He had it memorized. But now they had no moments. No place to put that kiss.

“What do you think?” asked Steve.

“I think that camera got what it was asking for,” said Sam offhand, knowing what Steve was actually asking, and refusing to answer.

“Is this working?” asked Steve, sidestepping his levity. “You know I don't have much of a yardstick for relationships. But this doesn't feel like it's working.”

“It's not ideal,” admitted Sam.

Usually this was the part where Steve would suggest some physical contact, insinuate with a look that he wanted Sam to touch him, but he didn't.

“Do you want to go public?” asked Steve. “Issue some kind of proclamation?”

“We both know how this conversation goes,” Sam said, with his last attempt at humor. “I only want what you want.”

“I don't want to drag you into this,” said Steve. “I dragged you back into the firefight after you had gotten out. I don't want to drag you into the limelight, too.”

Sam shook his head. “You never dragged me into anything, Steve. This isn't a draft. I volunteered.”

He put Steve's face in his hands. Steve turned his head up willingly, and Sam rested their foreheads together. He felt Steve's breath on his lips. Steve wound an arm around his waist.

It wasn't perfect, but did it have to be?

He ran a thumb over Steve's cheekbone, over his lower lip.

And that was when the alarm bells went off.

-

The rain had slackened by the time the bomb went off, and they had been counting on that rain.

Incendiary bombs and shrapnel bombs were his least favorite kind. This monster was a combination of both. It shed napalm-splattered shattered metal and debris in every direction. Wood, glass. Everything became a projectile. It rocked the colonnades with greater force than they had anticipated. Sam felt the now too-familiar sensation of the building beginning to collapse under his feet, and he took flight just as the roof disappeared from under him.

Fortunately, they had gotten most of the civilians out, but he could hear screaming evidence that not everyone had been clear of the blast radius. That, or they were bewailing the loss of their livelihoods. Sam prayed it was the latter.

“I'm clear,” he said into his earpiece. “Is everyone else?”

At first, no Rhodes. No nobody.

Then “-thought we had more time,” burst in Natasha's voice.

“Did Tony get clear?” Rhodes was demanding.

“He's fine, got a kid out. He's headed back in.”

“Do _not_ go in there, Romanoff, there's serious structural damage, the rest could collapse at any minute.”

“What happened?” Sam demanded into the middle. From his vantage point he could see only smoke.

“Sam needs to get in there,” said Natasha, with a bleak urgency that told him exactly what had happened. “Now.”

Sam skidded back to earth on the edge of the rubble, where Natasha stood covered in dust, her suit burnt, standing in a way that suggested at least one broken rib. Rhodes landed a second behind him, helmet opening. “What the hell happened?”

“We had a faulty reading - there were two bombs. Thought we could get in and disarm one. Set off the other.”

“Is Tony in there?” asked Rhodes at the exact moment Sam demanded “Where's Steve?”

“I had to leave him,” said Natasha, something pale in her practiced, dispassionate expression, something that wasn't the broken ribs. “I don't think he can be moved. Tony's keeping the rest of the building from collapsing on him.”

“Shit,” said Rhodes.

There was some kind of nauseous, alien static in Sam's ears. In his eyes. He navigated the field of rubble and napalm, dodging stubbornly clinging flame on doorframe and concrete. Buried in the smoke and incendiary stink, he caught the glint of the Iron Man suit, and found it supporting collapsing building struts over its head independently.

Tony had left the suit, needing his bare hands to apply pressure to the massive burial of shrapnel at the base of Steve's throat.

There were six inches of metal projecting from the top of his sternum, jagged edged and covered in dust. It had cleaved his right clavicle in two. Some secondary blow had rocked it, and gaped the wound. He could see naked bone protruding on either side. Bright red arterial blood was running freely and soaking through Tony's futile makeshift bandage. Covering his hands.

Steve's face was dead white, his eyes glassy and unseeing. When Sam slipped off his glove to take his hand, it was ice cold.

He knew why Natasha had sent him in, and it wasn't to help. It was in case Steve died.

Grasping his hand, feeling his chest aching as if he had the same piece of metal trapped in it, Sam touched Steve's face.

“Hey,” he said. “It's me. I'm right here.”

He thought he felt Steve's icy fingers tighten on his a little, but Steve didn't speak. Didn't look like he could speak. Looked like it was all he could do to keep breathing.

“The airlift will be here in three minutes,” said Tony, robotic, numb. “Just- hang on, Steve. Sam, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This is my fault.”

Sam didn't hear the broken sound in Tony's voice, or anything he was saying. He stroked Steve's hair back from his forehead. Mutely, he ran a thumb over his knuckles, thought hazily of the absurd coffee date that must have taken place in some other universe. He wondered why he had done any of those things. He wondered why he had thought anything else mattered. He thought he saw Steve's eyes focus a little, blue eyes like two lakes, reflecting stars. He thought he saw his mouth move. His lips were as pale as the rest of him. He was a man being turned to marble.

“Shh. It's okay,” promised Sam. “I'm right here.” He stroked his knuckles down Steve's cheek. “I'm not going anywhere, okay? I'm staying right here. You can relax. I'll watch your back.” He leaned down, rested their foreheads together again, murmured “Okay?” one last time before his throat closed in agony, in anticipatory loss, in helplessness and bloody-tasting self hatred, _if I had been there I should have been there why wasn't I_ , in knowing what this felt like, what death looked like, and turned to watch Steve's chest rise and fall, for as long as it was going to.


	10. ninety-seven

“You need to eat something.”

Rhodes never let up.

The rest of them knew better and left him alone. Romanoff sat in silent solidarity in the chair beside his. Tony had paced the hall like a tweaker until he finally said something incoherent about ‘needing to break- I mean, fix something’ and left. Sam had seen most of the others’ faces, through closing and opening hospital doors. Banner. Barton. Lang. Blurs of faces of concern, condolences, hopes and well wishes. None of them were cruel enough to say the words to his face.

Rhodes probably thought he was being what Sam needed. Providing that CO voice that they both knew and had been programmed to obey. That ‘keep humping, soldier’ voice that kept you going even in the face of a dead comrade. Like an automaton. Just keep going. Do what you can. What you have to. Survive.

Sam didn't really feel like it.

But he didn't have the breath to say so.

He stared down at his hands, unable to wipe out the memory of Steve's ice cold palms.

“I brought you a coffee,” said Rhodes. In a different voice. Tired. Sam looked up, and saw the exhaustion in his eyes. A soldier’s face he was more familiar with. Nothing as painful as sympathy, just ‘I know’.

Sam mutely took the cup, but didn't drink it, instead set it on the table next to him. The warmth of the cup was too different from the feeling of Steve's frozen hands. And he wasn't ready to let go of them yet.

Rhodes sat across the hall from him and Natasha, rested his head in his hands. “He might be in surgery another hour,” he said, to neither of them in particular. “His body metabolizes the drugs too quickly, so it's hard to keep him under. They're talking about continuing the transfusions and inducing a coma, and hoping his body will heal itself.”

Neither of them responded.

“They got most of the shrapnel out, at least,” concluded Rhodes.

Neither he nor Natasha asked what the odds were. They knew that no doctor on earth was qualified to give a number. To give hope. As far as super soldiers were concerned, they always lived. Until they didn't.

“You should get some sleep,” said Rhodes, not in his CO voice. Just saying it. Knowing that Sam wouldn't. Because if Steve died, he would want to be awake for that.

-

They let him in around three in the morning.

They said ‘ _stabilized_ ’ in a way that meant ‘ _we hope_ ’. In a way that sounded like ‘ _for now_ ’.

They let him go in alone with an air of ‘ _why not_ ’. A ‘ _couldn’t hurt_ ’ that felt more like a chance to say good-bye than a visit between operations.

Sam had seen Steve unconscious only a handful of times, and every time it struck him how _alive_ he was in every other moment. Sam never knew if it was a result of the serum, an artificially inhuman endurance, or if Steve had always been that way. Irrepressible. Never seemed to break a sweat. Reckless in a way that went beyond invulnerability.

One time, chasing down a would-be sniper and passing through a backyard, a tiny but territorial dog had latched onto Steve’s arm and stuck with him down seven backstreets, flapping from his bicep. Despite the multiple lacerations, and the fact that he got shot twice trying to apprehend the sniper while simultaneously defending the pomeranian, Steve had been outpacing Sam’s mile again within the week, deciding that doctors’ orders were less important than ribbing his friend. He’d hand-delivered the stupid dog’s owner a gift basket of dog biscuits the week after that. Steve just never stopped moving.

Now he didn’t move at all.

His chest rose and fell, but then, that was just the respirator.

His face was unmarked. All the damage was covered by sheets and bandages. And there was plenty of damage. The broken clavicle had not just snapped, but shattered, sending bone fragments deep into his chest. Ribs, too. Lungs flayed with them. Perforated liver. Pelvis half shattered from blunt trauma, from the initial blast of the bomb, and then riddled with shrapnel.

And the biggest piece. The one that had been so gruesomely lodged in his throat. While it hadn’t severed an artery, it had nicked one deep enough to cause a near bleed-out, and the impact had wreaked havoc on his larynx and trachea. Nothing as neat as ‘broken’ or ‘severed’. From the explanation given, it sounded like Steve’s torso may as well have been put through a blender.

But he was alive.

Sam sat in the chair beside Steve’s bed, and looked at him in silence for a long time. Just looked at him.

He looked at Steve’s face, his closed eyes, and thought of how many times he had imagined Steve sleeping beside him. This close, or closer. But not this pale. Not this still.

“Sorry,” he said finally. “I didn’t bring you any flowers.”

Not so much as a blip of the heart rate, but that was no surprise. Steve was far away and couldn’t hear him.

“I can’t believe I still haven’t brought you flowers,” said Sam. “You know those roses are still sitting out on my counter? Well not so much sitting, more lying there, getting in my way when I’m trying to make breakfast. When those things go to pieces, they get everywhere.”

He reached out and took Steve’s hand. It was warmer than last time. He was comforted by that. If Steve was dying, at least he was warm. At least he was in a bed. Someplace soft. With someone who loved him waiting by.

“You know, ninety-seven isn’t a bad number,” he said, through the lump in his throat. “And I don’t think anybody would mind rounding that up to a century. That’s pretty damn good. You’ve got me beat. Not sure I’m even gonna hit seventy; got some heart disease on my dad’s side.

“I don’t think anyone would begrudge you for stopping at ninety-seven.”

He wanted Steve to live. He wanted it so badly that he could have broken his own face for suggesting otherwise.

But this wasn’t about him.

He toyed with Steve’s limp fingers. “You did good, Cap. You always did. I just hope you know that.”

What else was there to say?

Plenty. But nothing that he couldn’t keep to himself. Nothing that couldn’t wait. And he had gotten pretty good at waiting.

Interlocking Steve’s fingers in his, he reclined his chair, and he waited.

-

Sam waited for three weeks.

At first there was no change.

Sam lived in and out of Steve’s hospital room, sleeping sometimes, cleaning up when he got the chance, drinking a lot of bad, burnt tasting hospital coffee. He was rarely alone. Natasha was there fairly often, though she liked to pretend not to be. He caught sight of her in small changes to the room, one of his pillows from home appearing inexplicably in his chair, a collection of dried up rose petals in a little crystal box, an apple. He caught little glances of other Avengers as well. A Naked juice that appeared on the bedside table one day. The next, a new game on his phone, with friends already added. He played pretend darts with Barton through the duller parts of the day, Barton who still managed to always beat him even on a virtual board. Tony showed up in person to have a nervous breakdown of an apology that was half ‘You had to go for the bomb - having an actual shield not good enough for you, had to play human shield, great!’, and leaving behind a gift that Pepper had to explain - an older model of the miniaturized arc reactor. “Good luck against shrapnel,” she said.

After a week, there was change. There was improvement. The doctors that had been sweating bullets over the fate of America’s only super soldier were visibly relieved, practically patting themselves on the back over not having killed him.

They took Steve off the respirator - and then hastily put him back on, when the machines started beeping their alarm. A few days later, they tried again.

This time Steve kept breathing.

His body was doing what it had been designed to do, the doctors said. Or what they could only assume it had been designed to do. Healing. All they really had to do was control the scar tissue, and make sure his body didn’t accidentally heal right through its own air supply.

The doctors had to open him up a few more times to collect shrapnel and bone fragments as they emerged, rejected from healing tissue. They added that some things were still too damaged to heal realistically. So Steve was probably getting a hip replacement.

That, almost more than the fact that he was in love with him, made Sam desperately want Steve alive and awake, so he could start making jokes about did Steve need a walker and did he want help crossing the street?

Every day, Steve looked a little more human. And Sam felt a little less like he was living in a nightmare.

With fresh confidence, he dared one morning to traipse down to the actual cafe, to get a coffee that didn’t taste like it had been scraped from the bottom of a pot. He left Natasha on Steve-watch.

Sam squinted at the sun like a man who had been living in a cave, and when he ordered his coffee, the barista looked at him funny. Like he looked like he had been living in a cave.

“Americano,” he said, and he stuck a whole twenty in the tip jar.

On his way out he pulled out his phone to see how many points Barton had him beat by.

He had a text from Natasha.

_Get back up here. Now._

He spilled half his coffee on his sprint back to the hospital, icy fear rooting in his fingertips and clawing its way to his heart.

_Please, please don't let him die without me._

When he reached the room, he had coffee down his shirtfront, and probably fresh burns from it, but he couldn’t feel a thing as he whipped open the door.

Natasha was standing over the bed, holding a pillow over Steve’s face.

Sam ripped it out of her hands. “What the hell are you doing?” Heart rate still climbing, but at least the comforting beep of Steve’s living vitals were the same.

She only looked at him with her half-cocked smile, and nodded down at the bed.

Sam looked down, and Steve blinked back up at him. Blue eyes. Disoriented. Awake.

“I thought you would want to be the first thing he saw when he woke up,” said Natasha. She must have shown herself out then, because by the time Sam could pay attention again, she was gone. But now she had already disappeared to him.

Sam sank back into his chair beside the bed. Grasped Steve’s hand again. Not quite able to believe when it grasped feebly back.

“Hey,” said Sam weakly.

Steve looked up at him with understandable fuzziness. But recognition. Looking at Sam's whole face carefully, as if measuring it against what he remembered.

“You look like shit,” said Steve, voice gravelly as hell.

“Look who’s talking,” said Sam. He knew he sounded giddy and didn’t give a shit. “Bet you feel like shit too. Were you going for a world record in number of pieces of shrapnel in one body?”

“Couldn’t have been that bad,” said Steve, still hazy, still gravelly, but lucid and alive and shrugging it off as only Steve could. “Your hair isn’t white, so I wasn’t out for decades this time.”

“Three weeks.”

Steve contemplated that, and then he gave Sam a somber look, a look that was an apology, and squeezed his hand again in that weak way. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Sam was better than okay. Except for the hammering in his chest, he thought maybe he was going to live forever.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” said Sam, and, “Sorry about this. The morning mouth. It’s really bad.”

He leaned down and pressed his lips to Steve’s, very carefully. Not perfect. Comatose-for-three-weeks mouth was pretty bad too. But he cupped Steve’s face in his hand, ran his fingers very gently through his dirty hair as he kissed him, and he couldn’t have given two shits about how imperfect it was. He felt Steve’s breath rise and fall in a gentle sigh, the way Steve curled their fingers together, the weak upturn of his head into the kiss.

“Don’t move, okay?” Sam murmured against his lips. “Your trachea is basically held together with duct tape, and if you snap your neck kissing me, I’m pretty sure they can send me to prison for that.”

“Okay,” Steve murmured back, eyes half-lidded. “You just kiss me then.” It was a testament probably to either the drugs or the extent of his injuries that he agreed. But Sam liked to think that his kissing making Steve weak in the knees (and the rest of his body) had something to do with it.

He straightened up, and Steve looked at him resentfully through those half-lidded blue eyes, tightening his grip on his hand.

“I’m going to get the doctor,” said Sam. “When we know you’re no longer actively dying, I’ll kiss you all you want.”

“Promise?” asked Steve.

“Yeah,” said Sam, and leaned down to kiss him one more time, probably harder than he should have, hearing Steve's heart beating on the monitor, and feeling his own beating painfully hard, in searing, heart-breaking gratitude. "I promise."


	11. yeah

It would have taken most men years of physical therapy to get back on their feet, but Steve Rogers was dazzlingly quick to recover. It helped that his spine was undamaged, there had been only a mild concussion, his arms and legs had only suffered clean, minute fractures, and there was no nerve damage. His chest had been hit the hardest, but even there, his heart was in one piece, and his blitzed organs bounced back with no need for a transplant. The doctors all wore an air of success and awkward uselessness.

After the hip transplant, Steve was up and being a doctor's worst nightmare within the month. He made friends with some ancient women with fresh hip transplants of their own. They weren’t quite from his time, but close enough to have some similar memories. Familiar stories. He played cards with them. Often Sam joined them, and Steve looked at him with that smile that made his whole insides light up, and they took turns cheating.

And of course, every kid in the building got an autograph. Most of them a picture with Captain America as well. Only one kid refused, demanding a picture with the Falcon instead. Steve later said that that was the highlight of his time in the hospital.

They made out a few times- as much as you could make out with zero privacy, and a partner who fairly often went “ow,” sometimes because he had twinged one of his many sore spots, and sometimes when nothing hurt at all, because it made Sam apologize profusely which Steve thought was funny.

As harrowing as the experience had been and still was, Sam would have never ID’d it as a romantic interlude.

But then Steve got the okay to go home (with strict orders about what activities he could and couldn't engage in, and for some of them, his doctor gave Sam a threatening look, stressing the dangers of certain forms of intercourse for someone recovering from injury and invasive surgery, like he was in high school sex ed all over again, and he and Steve had both very awkwardly cleared their throats and didn’t quite look at each other).

And then Steve had his official stamp of release, and Sam remembered where they had left off before the bomb, and he thought, _shit_.

They were going to have to have that conversation.

While Barton visited, entertaining Steve with a story of the latest tower drama (food theft from the communal fridge - he freely admitted to having taken Stark’s leftover chinese, but had managed to pin it on hapless Lang, who was already on Stark’s bad side for the whole ‘works with Hank Pym’ thing), Sam escaped to the cafeteria for some mediocre lime jello and a moment to think.

He knew Steve. That was a redundancy. He could already predict and dread his decision. Even the specific words. The ‘this is a risky job’, ‘this is a dangerous life’, the ‘I don't want to do this to you again’.

Sam had already felt a reluctance, kissing him, the way Steve would just hold on to him even when they stopped, the two of them just breathing, sharing space, faces close together. Like he had something to say. Sam would only kiss him again, harder, to smother whatever words Steve was so reluctant to voice.

Sam already had his rebuttals prepared. How first of all, did he think Sam didn't know the risks? Neither of them were fairy princesses, neither of them were nuns, neither of them were that sad girlfriend waiting for their boyfriend to come back from the war. They were soldiers. They knew how this worked. They had felt it work, tearingly, had those people ripped from them. Knowing that a comrade could die didn't mean you stopped drinking with them, laughing with them. Didn't mean you stopped loving them.

On his list of argument from A to Z, the worst case scenario was confessing his love, and giving Steve another horror to contemplate: breaking his heart. See how Steve dealt with _that_ unforeseen consequence.

He went back to the hospital room.

Barton had gone off to wherever he usually drifted off to, leaving Steve still in his ludicrous hospital gown, tapping through something on his phone. Given his expression, it was something related to official Avengers business.

“They said I’m good to go in the morning,” said Steve, without looking up. “Rhodey wants me at a press conference right after. Prove I’m not dead.”

“Great,” said Sam, falling back into the chair that had been his home for the past month.

“He suggested, and I agreed, that it would be a good time to issue that confirmation or denial of our relationship that he was talking about. Two birds, one stone. If you're okay with that.”

“Great,” said Sam again, bleakly. Steve looked at him again, a twinge in his brow. _Here it is. He's gonna say it._ Sam had had his rebuttals memorized. He was ready.

“I wanted your input on the word choice. I know ‘partner’ is a little heavy. Natasha suggested ‘going steady’, said it would give them a cute headline, but I feel like 'dating' is just fine."

Sam was a little tongue tied. Well. So. He didn't need those rebuttals.

He thought he was wordless, but words came out of his mouth anyway. “We may as well just say ‘banging’. That's all people are going to hear anyway.”

“Are you really okay with this?” asked Steve.

Sam answered in the form of a tongue kiss.

-

They had dinner at Tony's favorite Italian restaurant.

And this time, they got it right.

Sam took the wheel. Made Steve wait. Picked him up. Flowers - blue delphiniums, according to the florist, for Steve's blue eyes, which made him roll them.

“Hell of a lot smoother than roses, though, right?” said Sam.

“I concede to the master,” said Steve.

Sam, determined to prove that he _was_ the master romancer, pulled out all the stops. Opened doors. Every single door. Even picked up the check. He could have gotten Tony to pay, he was sure, the guy was still frazzled from seeing his friend nearly bleed to death. But Sam wasn't callous enough to capitalize on his mental health. That, and some macho, peacocking part of him insisted on the gut punch to his checking account. Ever since that first fateful jog where Steve had lapped him three damn times, they had been continuously one-upping each other, and since Steve wasn’t above capitalizing on his superhuman abilities, Sam usually lost the dick measuring contest. But now, boom. Drop the master card. It tumbled fatefully onto the check between their desserts (he finally got some of that tiramisu, and it was all it had been hyped up to be). Sam's triumph was dented only slightly by the knowledge that it was going to be a month or two before he could justify blowing cash on coffees every morning.

Master romancer.

Steve didn't seem impressed, but he did seem romanced. He had that smile which was half ‘you’re ridiculous’ and half ‘I’m having a good time'. “Okay,” he said, and put down his fork. “I have a question.”

“If that question is can we open another bottle of wine, the answer is no. My bank account has suffered enough.”

Steve didn't play along. “You had a routine set before,” he said. “Specific dates.” He ticked them off on his fingers, as Sam had done what felt like ages ago, leaning on his car after that ride back to his place. “Coffee. Movie. Dinner.”

Sam steepled his fingers together sagely as he nodded. “Tried and true system. Coffee date - test for chemistry and can easily escape if there are red flags. Movie shows a bit more commitment. Less easily escaped, but still light hearted. Dinner shows you're both cautiously optimistic and hoping to impress.”

“At what point does the hospital visit usually come in?”

“Hopefully,” said Sam, with a scowl that still hadn’t forgiven Steve for almost dying. “Never.”

“Sorry to disrupt your perfect system,” said Steve, not actually sorry. He was still entirely too blithe about the near death experience.

“Definitely threw a wrench into the works. We could have been twenty dates in by now if you hadn't blown yourself half to bits.”

“But we're back on schedule now.” Steve shrugged hopefully at him. “Coffee, movie, dinner. What happens next?”

“Depends,” said Sam, and he was so tempted to just say ‘Sex. Sex happens, Steve.’ Biting his lip on that, wishing he was biting Steve's. “Some people jump right into bed. Some people save that til marriage.”

“What about you?” Steve looked at him with level eyes, not flirty, just as casual as if they were discussing the menu.

“Oh, I'm traditional. I believe the first dinner date should be pretty hands off, wow them with a proper kiss at the end of it, but don't be pushy. Next date, maybe some accidentally on purpose knee touching, see how that goes.”

“This is our second dinner date, actually,” said Steve. “If you want to be technical.”

“True. So I guess some knee touching is warranted.”

Steve's leg pressed his gently under the table. “Like this?”

“Exactly like that,” said Sam, immediately hot under the collar. It really did not take much with Steve. “If they knee-touch back, it's usually game on. They invite you up to their place for coffee. By the way- coffee after 8 is almost universally code for sex. Don't count on it. But don't be surprised.” Their seats were entirely too close and the table entirely too private, he could have had his hand halfway up Steve's thigh in a second if he had wanted. He really wanted to. He wanted to see what Steve would do, if he would let him keep it there, or start coughing and clearing his throat and excuse himself to the bathroom.

Sam could already hear his voice getting deeper, lower, he couldn’t help it.

“Coffee equals sex, got it,” said Steve. He didn't look flushed, but there was something freshly distracted in his eyes, probably because of the way Sam was looking at his mouth and not moving his leg.

“So, you go up their place. It's usually their place. Most of the time they feel self conscious suggesting heading back to yours, like it's too easy.” Voice still getting lower. Leaning forward a little, over the table, pressing his leg more firmly against Steve’s, voice suggestive.

“Maybe you start kissing at the door. Maybe you wait until the pretense of coffee is brewing. Maybe you sit on their couch and continue some conversation from dinner. At some point, one of you makes a move. You start kissing. Just on the mouth, at first. Then someone moves to the neck. Someone puts a hand on a thigh. After that it takes less than a minute for someone to get their shirt off. And then, you know what happens next.”

“I do?” Steve raised his eyebrows, playing at being coy, but he was definitely flushed now. He was leaning forward too, his own voice softer. Slightly apprehensive, but more ‘I’m listening’. He was glancing covertly away to make sure there were no waiters nearby. 

“I don't know,” said Sam, and then, “Do you?” in a normal tone of voice. He moved his leg, leaned back, took off all the pressure, left Steve dangling leaning forward over the table.

Steve had utterly no response. Or if he did, he didn't say it out loud. He leaned back very slowly.

“Besides,” said Sam, swilling the last drops of red in his glass, delighted by the disorganization in Steve's expression. “I think you're too classy to sleep with someone on what, the fourth date?”

-

It had begun to turn to fall while Steve was in the hospital. This night there had been a gentle rain, making the sidewalks shiny under the street lights, and dotted occasionally with a single dark leaf. Sam peeled one off the bottom of his shoe at the top of Steve's apartment stairs, down the hall from the door he had honorably offered to walk him do. It was a ridiculous gesture from a regular man to a super soldier, but it had made Steve smile. Too bad it wasn't cold enough for jackets yet. He could have offered his to Steve, and that may have gotten him a laugh.

Sam peeled off the leaf and flicked it at Steve, who swatted it away, then stopped to pick it up, backtrack, and drop it in the bin at the top of the stairs. Of course he was too polite to leave so much as a leaf in a communal hallway.

“You're such a boy scout,” said Sam.

“‘Leave every place better than how you found it',” quoted Steve, pulling out his keys as they reached his door.

Steve unlocked his door, but didn't open it. Instead he turned around, putting his back to the wood, and looked at him. He crossed his arms.

“You know,” he said. He said in that soft, low voice from the restaurant. From that night on the phone. “I'm not a boy scout, Sam.”

There was a slight, irresistible cockiness to the way he tilted his chin up. There was hopeful invitation in his eyes.

“No,” agreed Sam, walking into him, pushing him against the door with a satisfying thump. “You're not.”

He kissed him up against the door. Steve became that soft, unresisting way that made him crazy, Steve, holding onto him only loosely while Sam cupped his jaw, pressed a hand against his lower back. Steve didn't say ‘ow’ as he had in the hospital, in seriousness or in jest. His fingers wrapped in the base of Sam's shirt. Sam could feel his breathing come just a little bit harder, as he pressed him harder back against the door. He very carefully bit down on his lower lip. Steve made an involuntary noise in the back of his throat. Sam went very hard immediately.

He released Steve with a near-groan, saying “Okay.” He was going to leave. He wasn't going to push anything. But Steve kept his fist curled in the front of his shirt.

“Sam, I don't have any coffee,” he said, with exasperation, and a plea in his eye that was half demand. “Do we really need a pretense?”

Sam had no self control. He put him right back up against the door. He put his face into the base of Steve's neck and started kissing his way up it. When he got back to Steve's mouth and tugged his lip once more, gently, with his teeth, Steve gripped him with hands that were no longer soft, and Sam could feel that he wasn't the only one who had gone hard. He had his hand on Steve's belt when Steve hissed, “I have neighbors,” as if only just remembering.

“Then open the damn door.”

Steve opened the damn door, and then shut it behind them, and they kept going on the other side of it. Alone. In the dark. The lights were off. All Sam could hear was Steve's soft, strained breathing, could taste him, feel his mouth and his hands, and he indulged himself in putting his hands wherever he wanted until Steve reached out, fumbled for a switch, and turned on a light.

“You said something about a couch?” he said, sounding and looking more out of breath than Sam had ever seen him in training. “I have one.”

“No,” said Sam. “The bed.”

Steve's apartment was almost as much of an anachronism as he was. He had old things, old things with the polish of new things, making Sam wonder if they had been made specially for him, to make him comfortable. If he had asked for them.

There was a book laying on the bed, whatever he had been reading before falling asleep, or maybe before leaving for their date. Steve picked it up and carefully replaced it on the shelf before turning back to Sam. “So who takes their shirt off first? You take yours off? I do?” There was a joke in his voice but a cautious question in his eyes, a question Sam had grown to love, the ‘why don’t you take the wheel on this one?’ look.

Sam stood in front of him, fingers hooked in his waistband, and pulled him in closer. “You take it off,” he said. “And I'll take care of the rest.”

Steve pulled his shirt off overhead, and Sam went back to kissing him the minute it was off, as he was unzipping Steve's pants, dropping his mouth to Steve's shoulder, and then he couldn't resist running his hands over the bare small of his back. He felt Steve breathing, shivering.

“Okay,” Sam murmured into his neck. “Onto the bed.”

Steve had left these lights off, but Sam wanted to see him, and he flicked on the dim bedside lamp as he sank down on top of Steve. He bent to kiss him again. But then Steve hissed, softly.

Sam backed off enough to see the wince on Steve's face. The lamp illuminated the scars on his body- both the old ones, paler pink, and the fresher ones, redder and more raised.

“It's okay,” said Steve, seeing the look on his face. “Really. It's fine.”

“I'm not sending you back to the hospital,” said Sam.

“It's fine,” said Steve, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, pulling his face in closer. “Just be gentle.” Half joking, half earnest.

“I was going to be anyway,” said Sam, and kissed him very softly. He looked down, running his fingers down Steve's chest, riddled with scar and muscles, down to his open waistband. He made one exploratory stroke over his pants, feeling him hard through it. “This is fine?” he checked, one last time. “This is what you want.” Making sure. Asking overall, about the whole thing, before he put the final nail in the coffin of their friendship, and also wanting to hear him say it, because he was fucking aching to hear him say it.

“Yeah,” said Steve, and when Sam slipped his hand down the front of his pants, he shuddered slightly, lifted his hips reflexively. “Yeah, that.”

Steve breathed into his mouth as Sam ran his fingers slowly up and down, and he was almost twitching, like his body didn’t know what to do with the sensation. He wrapped a hand around Sam's wrist, not stopping him, just grounding himself. “What do you want me to do?” asked Steve, breathless.

“Just relax,” said Sam, kissing his mouth, his chin, the base of his throat, the ridge of scar tissue that had almost killed him. Whispering, “Let me take care of it.”

He formed a fist around Steve's erection, rubbed more firmly down and back up again, and ran his thumb over the tip. Steve clenched his teeth with an audible click. Flushed. Sam kept touching him, alternating between light strokes and harder, gripping ones, and every time he squeezed a little harder, he could feel Steve bite back a small noise, trying to not wake the neighbors.

Christ, Sam wanted to wake the neighbors. He wanted to fuck Steve mindlessly, both of them cursing and fighting for breath, Steve leaving finger shaped bruises on his back because he wouldn't be able to stop himself grabbing with that inhuman strength. Sam wanted to break the damn bed.

“Is this okay?” he murmured into Steve's ear. “Feel good?” 

Steve just pressed his face into his neck, saying a muffled “Yeah”, and as he kept stroking, faster, Sam felt him shuddering. Heard him whisper, “shit”. Still lifting his hips up into that touch, into Sam's fingers. There was nothing voluntary about it.

“Relax,” murmured Sam. “Don't hurt yourself.”

“Don't stop,” said Steve, gripping his wrist harder. “God-” he winced again, hard, but not in pain, dropping his head back on the pillow. Sam followed his head down to kiss him, and Steve wrapped that arm around him in a vise, pushing his hips up into his hand, groaning into his mouth. “Let me-” he said, dropping his hand to Sam's waistband. “Can I-”

“Yeah,” said Sam, and Steve tugged down his pants, slid his hand in, fumbling cautiously, and when he got his grip Sam was the one saying “shit.”

He tried so hard to be gentle, to be slow. But christ. He lost track of what he was doing. All the fantasies of laying Steve down and doing him slow, drawing it out, blowing his mind, vanished in the reality of their mixed hot breathing, Steve’s voice in his ear, Steve not so much talking dirty as telling him what he needed, asking for it. It was intolerable. Sam wasn’t sure whether his head was going to explode or he was going to come.

He came, and it was all he could do to keep from just collapsing on top of Steve and his healing wounds. He collapsed on his less injured half and called that good. He felt like his whole body was vibrating.

“Okay?” asked Steve, completely breathless, half laughing.

“Great,” said Sam, who wanted to lay there for the next ten years. But he had a job to finish. “Your turn.” He reached up to kiss Steve on the mouth, Steve who was still flushed, and he was flushed down to his chest, as Sam kept kissing down it. Skimming his lips over his scars. Down to his hipbone, the line of muscle running past it. Pulling his waistband down the rest of the way.

Steve had about a second’s warning, a look down, to realize what he was doing, and then Sam was kissing the shaft of his dick, and Steve was gone. Hands gripping Sam's shoulders (and Sam would note with pleasure later on, that his fingers had left marks), he let his head fall back onto the pillow, and his chest heaved with every breath and bitten-back moan as Sam sucked him off.

Steve couldn’t manage a single word. If Sam was good at one thing, it was this.

When Steve came, it was almost in total silence. His entire body jerked upwards. Both hands clenched into fists, one hand knotted in the sheets, the other against Sam’s shoulder. He came hard, and came down from it with a slow trembling in every muscle. Sam didn’t stop blowing him until the spasms gave way to total, exhausted collapse.

Sam looked up to watch the dramatic rise and fall of his chest as Steve tried to get his breath back. Almost better than coming himself was the profound, all-encompassing satisfaction of seeing Steve so spent. This was what he had wanted, wanted for years: Steve come half to pieces underneath of him, warm, and trembling, holding weakly onto him.

Sam kissed him gently on the hip.

He didn’t ask, ‘How was it?’. He didn’t make a smart comment. He didn’t feel the need to say anything.

He eased back up the bed next to Steve, who was laying there with his head still back and his eyes closed. Not sure if Steve was the sort of person who wanted to touch after sex, Sam lay beside him, carefully eyeing his torso to make sure there wasn’t any sign of injury. Nothing but hickeys.

Steve dropped his head onto Sam’s shoulders without opening his eyes. Neither of them said anything for a few minutes, and then Steve muttered, “Okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”


	12. play doh

The part of Sam's brain accustomed to 6am jogs woke him up around five thirty, saying ‘okay, time to go run now’. To which he replied ‘fuck you, I am never getting out of this bed.’

Steve was still lying up against him in much the same way they had left it last night, Sam's face pressed into the back of his shoulder and one arm tossed loosely over his side.

Sam wanted to wake him. Roll him over and say, ‘Round two?’. He wanted to lie there and wait for Steve to wake up on his own, watch him open his eyes hazily in the early morning light to see that Sam was still there, probably remember all of the previous night, probably laugh or look chagrined, have some horror about the neighbors’ poor ears.

Sam also really wanted coffee. And to pee.

“Hey,” he grunted. Sleep did ungraceful things to his voice. He shook Steve's shoulder.

Steve said “Mmph,” in an unhappy way, through a faceful of pillow.

“You don't have to get up,” said Sam. “I just wanted to remind you that I blew your mind last night before I made you breakfast.”

Steve turned his head to look at him crossly and sleepily. “There's nothing in the fridge,” he said, and, “What time is it? I thought sex meant sleeping in.”

“Don't you normally get up this early anyway?” Sam swung his legs over the edge of the bed and grabbed his pants off the floor.

“Not after having my mind blown,” said Steve, half sarcastic and half still asleep. He eyed Sam getting dressed. “Do you have to get up?”

Sam leaned over to kiss him on the mouth. “I'll be back. Breakfast in bed?”

Steve grunted moodily and dropped his face back into the pillows, claiming the rest of the sheets that Sam had abandoned.

Dude had no food in the house.

That ‘I don't have any coffee’ line hadn't been a line at all. Not a bean to be found. How did he live?

Sam found a box of black tea, opened it, looked down at the packets.

Thought, _Has it really come to this?_

He slapped two mugs of water in the microwave, slapped teabags in those, and returned to the bedroom with the fruits of his labor.

“Breakfast in bed,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed, setting a mug down on the bedside table. He took a sip and made a face.

“Told you there's nothing.” Steve rolled over, propped himself up on his elbow.

“You didn't prepare for an overnight guest at all, did you?”

“You never got that far in your dating column,” said Steev. “There's only one toothbrush, too.”

“Next time, we're doing this at my place.”

“That was my plan all along,” said Steve, sitting up enough to reach for his mug of tea. “Make the morning after such a disaster that you insisted on redoing it your way.”

“Like I need an excuse,” said Sam. “You think I was just gonna hit it and quit it?”

“Maybe if I was bad enough in bed."

“Steve, you could lay there like a dead fish and I would still rip your clothes off at any given opportunity.”

“Yeah?” said Steve, not in a question, but in suggestion.

Sam took Steve's mug, put both of them aside, and climbed on top of him again. He felt Steve's lips smiling against his. He pulled the sheets down, slid between Steve's thighs, and ran his hand all the way down. He had him gasping within minutes.

Sam had a better handle on things after last night, and he managed to stave Steve off for a while. He stayed relentlessly gentle, kissing him deep and slow. When he thought Steve was about to come, he stopped and just kissed him, pushed down his arms as if Steve couldn't free himself in a second. Steve, to his credit, didn't. He let Sam do exactly what he wanted, dancing around his orgasm, until finally he grabbed the back of Sam's shirt. “Come on, man,” he said helplessly into his ear.

And Sam relented, finishing him off with a flourish. This time he got to feel Steve come with their lips together, Steve's body jerking under his, hear the soft noise he made. Steve buried his fists in the small of his back.

Steve didn't flop his head back but pressed his forehead into Sam's shoulder. “Dating at all was a shitty idea,” he said, sounding spent. “Why didn't we just do this?”

“Because I had some partner you made up, and you were pining after Natasha, remember?”

Steve snorted. “You didn't believe that one for a second, did you?”

“If I had I would have hit you over the head and put you into witness protection. She scares me.”

“Me too,” said Steve, and now he did drop his head back, looked back up at Sam with a soft solemnity. “I thought, back then, that maybe you were interested. That there was something there. But I wasn't sure. I didn't want to push it.”

“You don't need to explain yourself.”

“I wasn't sure about myself, either.” Steve apparently thought he did. “A lot has changed. I didn't even know where I stood back in 1942. Too busy chasing Hitler. And now it's only more confusing. There are a lot more options.”

“Huh,” said Sam. “Hitler. Interesting choice for pillow talk.”

“Shut up,” said Steve impatiently. “I just wanted to say, I didn't mean to make things complicated.”

“Dude, the day your life stops being complicated is the day I assume I've fallen into a coma and am dreaming it all. I'm cool with complicated, Steve. But if you apologize for it one more time I'm dumping your ass.”

“Fair enough,” said Steve, looping his arms around his neck. “You didn't come,” he pointed out.

“You know how you can make it up to me?” asked Sam, suggestively into his ear.

“How?”

“Order a pizza. I'm starving.”

-

“This has got to stop,” said Tony, after catching them kissing in the hallway for a shameful twelfth time. Banner was on his heels, looking wincingly as if he had wished they had just kept walking. “You aren't teenagers. This isn't a high school passing period, this is a place of employment. Can't you two keep it in your pants until after work like normal adult human beings?”

“You're literally holding a box of play doh right now,” pointed out Sam.

“It's just kissing,” shrugged Steve. And most of the time that was true.

“Play doh has valid scientific applications,” Tony shot at Sam. “And you.” This time at Steve, pointing an accusatory finger. “I thought you at least would have some shame. What happened to the repressed, stick up the ass Captain America we all knew and loved?”

“My hearing aids must be on the fritz,” said Barton, popping his head out of the nearest room, leaning in the doorframe and fiddling theatrically with his ear hole. “I could have sworn I heard Tony Stark lecturing someone about being shameless.”

“No, I heard it too.” Natasha materialized behind him, drinking a smoothie and suited up in a way that suggested the conversation was about to be moot in the face of that employment Tony had mentioned. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle indecent.”

“You look combat ready,” observed Banner, seizing on a change of subject.

“Yeah, some of us have better things to do than play with play doh and make out in corners,” she said. “Hostage crisis. Anyone interested in actually doing their jobs?”

“Play doh has valid scientific applications,” said Tony, then, “Where? How many?”

“North of the border,” she said. "About a hundred people on lockdown, rumors of Hydra tech stashed under a preschool, and someone's shown up to claim it. About twenty someones. Local authorities are afraid to touch it. Who knew Ontario had so much going on?”

“A preschool?” repeated Steve. He and Sam swapped glances.

“No casualties or injuries as far as they know.” Natasha passed Clint his holster of arrows and he began checking points. “Obviously everyone wants to keep it that way. Thor is not invited. And sorry Banner, but you're off the guest list as well.”

“I understand,” he said. “Cool heads only.”

“If that were the case, there would only be two of us going,” said Clint. “But the rest of you can come too, I guess.”

-

“You know what just occurred to me?” Tony's voice intruded through their earpieces over the sound of the wind, rifling through the carrier's underside.

The four of them who didn't have wind defying flight suits, sitting in the carrier, exchanged looks.

“What is it, Tony?” asked Steve, with resignation.

“Now that you and Wilson are boyfriends, you've got an empty best friend slot. And I am calling dibs on all future guys’ nights out.”

Clint made a great show of turning his hearing aids off.

“You can be dating someone and still be their best friend, Tony,” said Steve.

Totally ignoring his input, Tony continued. “As soon as we're back in familiar territories, I am grabbing the Cadillac and we are headed straight for Vegas.”

“Uh huh. No.”

“Cap, if not you, who am I going to scam the slot machines with?”

“I'm right here,” came Rhodes’s voice. Also keeping pace with the vessel outside.

“Good god, I thought you were a really well-crafted UFO,” said Tony. “Why so tight-lipped today?”

“Doing my job? We're on site in ten. Is everyone in there ready?”

Natasha elbowed Clint, who turned his aids back on, and nodded across the aisle.

“Good to go,” said Steve into their collective earpieces.

They unbuckled as the carrier began its descent, standing and grasping the handholds dangling from the ceiling.

Steve gave Sam one of his lingering looks, leaning against him. “If you want a romantic getaway after this,” said Sam, leaning back at him, and ducking his mic to suggest it into his ear. “We could hit Vegas, just the two of us. One of those chapels.”

“Save lives first, make awkward overtures about popping the question later,” said Steve, with his Captain’s voice.

“As long as you don't go running into any more bombs,” said Sam. “If you stick me with another three months of eating hospital food, I'm never sucking your dick again.”

Steve gave him a smile of raised eyebrows, an ‘oh yeah?’, and leaned in, and Sam kissed him, right before the carrier hit the tarmac, and they became hitched to whatever life or death lay on the other side of the next 24 hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> s/o to the person who wanted more action sequences


	13. finally clint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 7/9/18  
> This story was meant to be 14 chapters long, but I stopped at 13 and never finished, and as of now I'm gonna call it. I will not be updating this work again. Thanks for reading and I hope you guys enjoy it as it is!

If there was one thing that had surprised Sam about the whole Avenging deal, it was how much waiting was involved. First was the intelligence gathering, then analysis, then coming up with a plan of action. Then action. And if they had done all of the previous steps correctly, the action took only minutes. Sometimes moments. It was like watching a game of chess. Nothing happened for a long time, and then everything happened all at once. You won. Or you lost.

Sometimes it ended in a stalemate.

This stalemate manifested itself in the form of their last target standing with a gun to the head of a four year old, the panic of any trapped rat in his eyes.

And it was him and Tony Stark, christ. Steve and Natasha were a floor down detonating a bomb. Why was there always a fucking bomb?

Sam wished Banner had come after all - he was good at talking people down.

“Hey man,” he said. “You really don't wanna do this.”

“You really don't. How do you think this is going to end, anyway?” Tony was not helping. “You put a bullet in that kid and they will be cleaning you off the ceiling for weeks.”

Yeah, like the best thing to do with a rat in a corner was to bait it.

“Chill, Tony,” said Sam. “Why don't we all just chill for a minute?”

The floor was scattered with puzzle pieces, little rubber dinosaurs. A collapsed desk. Bullet holes running over the wall, over a chart of children's names with however many gold stars they had earned. The man with the gun had a gold star stuck to his elbow, unnoticed, and glitter glue on the toe of his boot. The girl had a bloody nose.

“I didn't do that,” he said defensively. “She was bleeding when we came in.”

“Bullshit,” said Tony.

“It happens to me sometimes,” said the man. “When I have dry sinuses.”

“You don't put that kid down, you won't _have_ any sinuses in ten seconds, asshole.” Tony had his arm raised, propulser at the ready.

“Hey man,” said Sam, to the hostage taker, not to Tony, giving him up as a lost cause. “We all get nosebleeds. No biggie. She's ok. You ok, kid?”

The kid, a homely little carrot top in an ugly sweater with puppies on it, could have been crying, or just snuffling loudly around the bloody nose. She had a lopsided name tag that said ‘MADDY’ on it.

“I'm thine,” she said, which was probably what ‘fine’ sounded like through a nosebleed.

“Great,” he said. “Maddy’s fine. We're all fine over here. And you're fine too, dude. No problem. What's your name, man?”

“This cuddly thing usually work out for you?” asked Tony pithily.

“Shut the hell up,” Sam shot back.

“Glenn,” said the gunman, and,

“Glenn?” repeated Tony incredulously. “What type of name is Glenn for a hostage taking gunman?”

“It's my fucking name, okay?” the man snapped.

“Nice to meet you, Glenn,” said Sam loudly, over Tony's incredulity. “My name’s Sam.”

“I know who you are,” said the man.

“Yeah? You read my little bio on Wikipedia? I read one of yours. Glenn Mence? Ex military. We've got that in common.”

“Trying to find common ground in a hostage crisis,” said Glenn, and laughed. “Isn’t that a little pedestrian?”

“It's a lot pedestrian,” said Tony, who hadn't lowered his propulser.

“It's what I got,” said Sam. “Hey, here's some more common ground: we both think Iron Man is an asshole.”

“Yeah, that's accurate,” said Glenn.

“Nice,” said Tony.

“What about more common ground?” Sam cast out a net for anything, landed on Maddy's sweater dotted with blood. “You like puppies man? Everyone likes puppies.”

“I'm allergic,” admitted Glenn, with another laugh, but this one was bleaker.

He dropped the barrel of his gun in helplessness that went beyond being outgunned. “I've got nowhere to go, Sam-”

And that was when Barton sniped him through the head.

-

“You did great,” said Steve. “You did exactly what you had to.”

Steve said what he had to say, what he could say in public, the kind of thing they could print in the papers. That shoulder squeeze, the most he could bring himself to do in front of the press even after they had gone public, was more honest. His eyes were the most honest. People were usually too dazzled to look too deeply at them, see anything beyond the blue, but Sam could see the bitterness and see him looking at the rubble of the kindergarten.

“All the kids got out,” he said. “And the teachers.”

Some unfortunate janitor had been made to open the gate, and the infiltrators had shot him, back when they had hopes of coming and stealing and leaving unnoticed.

“There was nothing down there,” said Steve later, when they were away from the cameras, back on the carrier headed home. His voice was much bitterer than his eyes had been. “They were willing to dig under a building full of children on nothing but a rumor.”

They all had their uneasy roles as ambassadors of the future, heralds of the new world of the strange and the powerful. As much as they were heroes, they were also walking advertisements of that power. And its harnessability.

“You did exactly what you had to do.” Sam echoed him, half as bitter as he was, half sardonic, all acknowledgment and understanding. “It's a tough gig,” he said a moment later.

“We're tough guys,” said Steve, looking at him levelly, a question in those blue eyes. How tough?

They’d had the conversation a few times. Sometimes with words, sometimes with a look. The same conversation they had had the first day Steve visited him at the VA.

_‘You thinking of getting out?’_

_‘No. Maybe. I don't know.’_

In another version of the universe, he liked to think that Steve had landed on the side of ‘maybe’, and they had gone for that coffee much earlier, and Steve would have gotten out, and Sam would have stayed out. By now they could have been picking out wedding china.

But instead Steve and Natasha had showed up at his place covered in dust, and the Winter Soldier had happened, and since then Sam knew it was more search than obligation that kept Steve fighting the good fight. No; that wasn’t right. It was just a different kind of obligation.

They got home from that blown up preschool and Steve sought some kind of solace in his arms, but Sam excused himself politely for the shower, and tried to drown the stink of smoke in hibiscus bodywash, and tried to pretend that seeing someone straight up shot in the head hadn’t bothered the hell of him. It wasn't like it had been the first time.

He got out of the shower and Steve was asleep. Sam didn’t wake him up. He lay there and watched him sleep in that dumb, shitty way he had always wanted to.

Steve was beautiful. And he loved him. He loved him bad. And he hated that the bombs, the hospital, the headshot had cheated him out of being able to watch Steve sleep without being afraid of losing him.

Most nights they slept in the same bed. Most days they swapped looks, shared jogs, annoyed everyone in the tower with how cute they were. It was hard to find pet names that managed to mortify everyone else while not also mortifying them in the process (‘Baby’ was out, Steve had finally gotten around to watching Dirty Dancing), but they managed (‘Stud’ went over well in all categories). Sometimes Sam woke up in the middle of the night thinking he could smell Steve’s blood, and woke him up, and when Steve said a sleepy “What?” Sam pretended he had woken him up for sex, and Steve was always pleasantly surprised by sex, by being wanted.

 _‘You wanna take this to the next level?’_ Steve texted him one day.

Sam texted back a comic about ‘Anal Safety Snails’ and a question mark.

He was a coward, okay? He liked having Steve in his arms, nearly every morning now, liked the way Steve complained when he drank orange juice right out of the bottle. He liked dating him. He thought he probably wanted to date him for the rest of his life.

But what was ‘the next level’ for a man born in 1918? Sam joked about popping the question, in a ‘it's too early in the relationship for this to be serious. so it's ok to joke about’ kind of way, but what did marriage mean for two men who traveled the world getting half killed half the time? What did ‘the rest of his life’ mean when that could mean the rest of the week? What did it mean if ‘the rest of his life’ meant until he was 73 and the heart disease got him, and Steve was still a super soldier? Still perfect?

He didn't want to think about it, so he sent Steve the comic about the anal safety snails, and he thought that maybe they ought to get out, before it was too late.

Then Barton sniped Glenn in the head.

Then he couldn’t really think, all he could do was watch Steve sleep, and be a shitty boyfriend, and be jealous and scared of death all at once.

-

Barton bought the coffee.

Barton, who he suspected was acting under orders from Romanoff, and who never actually took his sunglasses off or put down his phone, invited Sam out for coffee. And he didn’t even drink a coffee. He just got a muffin.

With the hearing aids, sunglasses, and candy crush, Sam didn’t know how the hell he was supposed to know if Barton was even listening, but the guy had invited him out and he knew why, so fuck it, he was just going to say it.

“You didn’t have to shoot him,” said Sam.

“Right to the point,” said Barton, still not looking at him. “Your therapist must have it easy.”

“I was talking him down. _Clint._ You know he was just nineteen? You know they recruit out of poverty, right? You don’t think we could have gotten out of there without more blood?”

Finally Barton took off his sunglasses. “I made a call,” he said. “But you know that. You’re not pissed at me.”

“Who said I was pissed?”

“You did. You exude pissed.” Barton ripped off a bit of muffin, gestured at him with it. “You know how they always say things about how people who are deaf, or blind, their other senses are more attuned?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s not true. _Everybody_ knows you’re pissed. You walk around with pissed off shoulders. You break things in practice.” He didn’t bother to eat the muffin, just kept gesturing with it. “And they say to me, ‘Clint, why don’t you talk to him?’ ‘Clint, why don’t you two have a one-on-one?’ So here, we’re having a one-on-one. Let’s make it look good, so they never ask me to do it again.”

Somehow Barton’s utter disregard was working for him.

“I’m not pissed at you?” clarified Sam.

“How about we don’t insult our own intelligence?” suggested Barton, as he looked at his plateful of crumbs as if he wasn’t sure what had happened to his muffin. “You’re mad because you’re helpless to protect the people you love, and so is everyone, periodically. Person. Person you love.”

“I’m not helpless,” objected Sam.

“Hm,” said Barton. “Okay, try this. Don’t insult _my_ intelligence. If you’re going to be all butch about it, fine. Steve’s huge. He’s a giant, strong, freakish human being. Half of them are. You and me, we’re not carrying anybody off the battlefield into the sunset in this situation.”

“I never realized it,” said Sam, crossing his arms. “Since you’re so quiet most of the time. But you’re kind of an asshole, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, well.” Barton flicked muffin off his fingertips. “This asshole is trying to do you a favor. Don’t get pissed at yourself for being a shitty, fallible human being. Most of us are. Do what you can do to keep the person, people you love safe. End scene. And get like- a smoothie, for once. All I ever see you drink is coffee.”

Sam looked down at his coffee, picked it up, shook his head.

“Good talk?” suggested Barton, picking up his plate of crumbs. “Good talk.”

-

Steve was at his place when Sam got in. He had a key, but he didn’t usually use it. That part of Steve that was still stuck in the 40s seemed to think that was impolite.

But today Steve was there. Sam could tell the second he walked in and smelled garlic. Unless he had some burglars who decided to go grocery shopping and whip up some pasta before they left, Steve was cooking.

“If you’re wearing an apron, I’m taking a picture and sending it to every media outlet,” Sam announced from the hall.

He reached the kitchen, leaned in the doorway, and raised his eyebrows. All the way.

“I thought you would appreciate this more,” said Steve, who was shirtless. “A wise man once told me that generalizing would be the death of my love life, so I thought I’d get creative.”

“Uh huh,” said Sam, crossing his arms. “How many times you burn yourself?”

“Believe it or not, I do know my way around a kitchen,” said Steve. “I fed myself for years, back in the day. That’s why I like to let other people do it now. Takeout and delivery are the great staples of the 21st century.”

“Okay, Gordon Ramsay. How many times you burn yourself?”

“Just once. And that was only because of your broken colander.”

“Sure, blame my cooking utensils,” said Sam, and he went to push Steve up against the counter, put his hands on his bare waist and make out with him a little, and then he had to stop. “That actually smells amazing. What did you make?”

“That same wise man once told me that chicken alfredo wasn’t a big winner for an at-home dinner date,” said Steve, leaving one arm around his neck, pulling up a recipe on his phone with the other. “So I went with ‘bucatini with butter-roasted tomato sauce’. That impressive enough?”

“Steve, you could have made me toast and if you had served it to me with your shirt off, I would have been impressed.”

“There’s also garlic bread,” said Steve. “And beer.”

“Huh,” said Sam. “I wasn’t sure which I wanted more, to fuck you silly or eat some pasta, but now I'm sure. Go put your shirt on. You get fresh-grated parmesan?”

“Yeah,” said Steve drily. “It’s by the beer.

Afterwards, Sam was in too much of a blissful carb coma to make any moves, but he lay contentedly half-asleep on top of Steve while a miscellaneous action movie played in the background.

“Here I thought cooking dinner would get me some action,” mused Steve, running his knuckles over the back of Sam’s neck. “I feel lied to.”

“Shut up, man, this is the best part. He’s about to Die Hard.”

“So am I.”

Sam looked up at him, and Steve looked back at him, a look that was way more ‘I'm clever, did you catch that, how funny I am?’ than bedroom eyes.

“You wanna move in with me?” asked Sam.

Steve smiled in that way he did, that surprised at being wanted way. The battlefield was a thousand miles away. The room smelled like garlic and hibiscus.

"Sure," said Steve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
